Podcasts about sir laurence olivier

"No One Will Ever Know" is an episode of the ABC Mystery Time radio program from 1957. 1. About ABC Mystery TimeABC Mystery Time was a radio anthology series that aired in the 1950s.It featured suspenseful and thrilling mystery stories.The series also went by other names, such as Mystery Time and Mystery Time Classics.Don Dowd hosted the show.Some episodes featured notable actors, including Sir Laurence Olivier. 2. About the Episode "No One Will Ever Know"The specific plot and characters of this episode are not widely available.It is known to be one of the 17 episodes produced for the ABC Mystery Time series.Unfortunately, only 13 of the 17 episodes are known to have survived. 3. Significance and Legacy:ABC Mystery Time contributed to the rich history of radio drama during the "Golden Age of Radio".The series showcased the power of audio storytelling in creating suspenseful and engaging narratives."No One Will Ever Know", like other episodes, likely offered listeners a thrilling escape into the world of mystery and suspense.

Rob Cook makes his presenting debut and brings us an MIT special with series regular Richard Hope (DS Barry Purvis) One of this country's most successful character actors discusses his new role in #Giant opposite John Lithgow! At the time of the interview, Giant was about to open at the Royal Court and following a successful run the play has now transferred to the West End for a limited run at the Harold Pinter Theatre - https://www.haroldpintertheatre.co.uk/shows/giant Rob also takes Richard back in time as he shares highlights of his career, from working with Sir Laurence Olivier to Anthony Hopkins, before he shares his memories of #TheBill spin-off #MIT In Part 2, Richard will be sharing his memories of sweeping June Ackland off her feet as headmaster Rod Jessop. If you can't wait until then, unlock both episodes as video podcasts, along with over 250 hours of exclusive content - patreon.com/thebillpodcast The Bill Podcast is brought to you in proud association with georgefairbrother.com shop.saturdaymorningpress.co.uk vanguardcomics.co.uk gibconsultancy.co.uk and mcr-seo.com

From the poison apple to the kiss that awakens Snow White to a philosophical and scientific exploration of the nature of love itself, this episode has it all!“Zzzzzzz…”Snow White (circa 1939)Ah, love is in the air. Someday, YOUR prince (or princess) will come, dear Does it Fly? fans. Of this, we are certain. Why? Because even something as seemingly metaphysical as love, like everything else in the universe, is governed by certain scientific principles! Crazy, right?When we first started thinking about the concept of “true love's kiss” as most famously depicted in the 1939 Disney animated classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (not to mention countless other versions of the story), we were more concerned with the actual mechanisms of the poison in the apple that renders poor Snow White comatose, and what it would take to deliver an antidote solely via a gentle kiss on the lips. And while we do indeed cover all of that in the latest episode, our discussion spirals outward into broader philosophical discussions about the very nature of love itself! In the process, we learn a bit more about both of our hosts, and maybe (choking back tears) a little about ourselves, too!Check out the latest weirdly romantic and wistful episode of Does it Fly? now!SUGGESTED VIEWING We based the main part of our discussion for this episode on the Disney's 1939 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. But while you're at it, give 2007's Enchanted a look, which gives a number of the classic Disney princess (and Snow White specifically) tropes a new spin!To take things a little further afield, if you want to know the origins of the term “true love's kiss” as far as we know, it goes back to William Shakespeare's Richard III. Sir Laurence Olivier's 1955 screen version is generally considered to be the finest version of it to make it to film. Get some culture in your life!And if you really want to get out there, Hakeem mentions Sam Harris' exploration of MDMA and the concept of love in many forms, which is explored here.FURTHER READING Do you want to delve a little deeper into the facts, concepts, and stories Hakeem and Tamara referenced in today's episode? Of course you do! Smelling SaltsWe're willing to bet that everyone has seen smelling salts used in cartoons or old movies but few of you have actually experienced them. Here's how they work, though.“Love Brain”Ah, say those words that every girl longs to hear… “oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin.” OK, maybe not those words exactly. That being said, the matter of “chemistry” when it comes to love and sexual attraction is in fact a literal thing! Let the big brains at Harvard explain.Consent and Snow WhiteFor a nuanced take on one of the questions that has come up around the matter of “true love's kiss” check out this article Tamara found in The Princess Blog!WANT MORE FROM DOES IT FLY?You know what pairs really well with this episode? Our exploration of Elphaba in Wicked, which you can watch right here!Another fairy tale trope (albeit one that was used to much more spooky effect) is the concept of the “familiar”, something we explored in detail in our episode about The Crow. Check it out!FOLLOW US!Stay in the loop! Follow DoesItFly? on YouTube and TikTok and let us know what you think! And don't forget to follow Roddenberry Entertainment:Instagram: @RoddenberryOfficial Facebook: RoddenberryBluesky: @roddenberrypod.bsky.socialFor Advertising Inquiries: doesitfly@roddenberry.comCheck out the official Does it Fly? playlist, too!

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After 212 episodes, we try something different. REALLY different. Meanwhile, we're rejoined by the host of the brand new (relaunched) media tech podcast, Channels with Peter Kafka, Peter Kafka. We cover Dustin Hoffman, Roy Scheider, and Sir Laurence Olivier in the 1976 paranoia thriller classic, Marathon Man. Chapters Introduction (00:00:00) Hatch News (00:17:41) Marathon Man Roundtable (00:28:20) Your Letters (01:16:27) Notes and Links Check out Escape Hatch Merch! Our all new collection of swag is available now and every order includes a free Cameo style shoutout from Haitch or Jason. Browse our collection now. Join the Escape Hatch Discord Server! Hang out with Haitch, Jason, and other friends of the pod. Check out the invite here. Escape Hatch is a TAPEDECK Podcasts Jawn! Escape Hatch is a member of TAPEDECK Podcasts, alongside: 70mm (a podcast for film lovers), Bat & Spider (low rent horror and exploitation films), The Letterboxd Show (Official Podcast from Letterboxd), Cinenauts (exploring the Criterion Collection), Lost Light (Transformers, wrestling, and more), and Will Run For (obsessed with running). Check these pods out!. See the movies we've watched and are going to watch on Letterboxd Escape Hatch's Breaking Dune News Twitter list Rate and review the podcast to help others discover it, and let us know what you think of the show at letters@escapehatchpod.com or leave us a voicemail at +1-415-534-5211. Follow @escapehatchpod on Twitter and Instagram. Music by Scott Fritz and Who'z the Boss Music. Cover art by ctcher. Edited and produced by Haitch. Escape Hatch is a production of Haitch Industries.

A new AI app has cloned Judy Garland's voice to read "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." ElevenLabs, a text-to-speech AI startup, announced its Reader App, which can replicate the voices of iconic figures like Garland, James Dean, Burt Reynolds, and Sir Laurence Olivier. The app, launched last week on iOS and with preregistration open for Android, transforms any text into a voiceover with emotion and contextual understanding. The startup collaborated with the estates of the late stars for this technology. However, voice-cloning technology poses ethical challenges and has been misused in scams. ElevenLabs placed voice-cloning behind a paywall and implemented content moderation to prevent misuse and report illegal activities. Recent events highlight these ethical challenges, such as Scarlett Johansson's legal action against OpenAI for cloning her voice without permission.Learn more on this news visit us at: https://greyjournal.net/news/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to another thrilling episode of "Friday Night Noir" on Vintage Classic Radio! This Friday, we kick off with the mesmerizing “ABC Mystery Time” featuring the iconic episode, "The Picture of Dorian Gray." Originally broadcasted in 1956, this adaptation of Oscar Wilde's novel delves into the eerie story of a man whose portrait ages while he remains young and beautiful, reflecting the dark deeds of his life. Hosted by Don Dowd, "ABC Mystery Time" attracted top-tier talent, including the legendary Sir Laurence Olivier, who brought Dorian Gray's complex character to life. Supporting Olivier, the cast featured notable actors such as Judith Anderson as the insightful Lady Agatha and Ralph Richardson providing the voice of the morally conflicted Lord Henry. The episode is a splendid example of how ABC Mystery Time adapted classic literature into captivating radio drama, enticing listeners with its psychological depth and moral intrigue. Following that, our night continues with the "Eleventh Hour" radio series and the episode titled "Millionaire's Double." This intriguing tale revolves around a wealthy man who employs a look-alike to thwart potential threats, only to find himself entangled in a deadly game of deceit and mistaken identity. This episode is a prime example of "Eleventh Hour's" knack for suspenseful storytelling with unexpected twists. "The Eleventh Hour," a riveting radio drama series from the 1960s, was produced by Artransa Park Studios in Sydney in collaboration with 2GB 873AM and the Australian Broadcasting Company. Originally syndicated for the South African market via Springbok Radio and later broadcast to U.S. troops overseas, the series eschewed the typical horror host, opting instead for a direct plunge into action, enhancing the suspense. Although drawing from popular American radio dramas, "The Eleventh Hour" maintained a unique flair, leveraging high production values and the influence of American cinema to create a distinctive and eerie atmosphere. Both episodes highlight the golden era of radio drama, bringing together stellar casts and gripping narratives that continue to enchant audiences even decades after their original airings. Join us this Friday on Vintage Classic Radio for a night of mystery and suspense that promises to be unforgettable!

Celebrating Shakespeare's Birthday, Nick Hennegan talks about his links to the Bard and features speeches by the classic actors Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir John Gielgud and music from 'Shakespeare In Love.' www.BohemianBritain.com 

Celebrating Shakespeare's Birthday, Nick Hennegan talks about his links to the Bard and features speeches by the classic actors Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir John Gielgud and music from 'Shakespeare In Love.' --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bohemianbritain/message

"Release the Kraken!" We watched Clash of the Titans (1981) with our friend Darren Elms and we're ready to face Medusa! This Sword and Sandals epic may be from the early '80s but the cast, the costumes and the classic stop motion effects make you think twice (was it made in the '60s?). Heavily rerun throughout our youth we got to know Harry Hamiln's Perseus on his quest to defeat the gorgon Medusa and the "titan" the Kraken and we certainly got to know that body-ody-dy. But it's the women in this cast that made us revisit this movie every time. No one plays a woman scorned like Dame Maggie Smith as Thetis against Sir Laurence Olivier's mighty Zeus. The pantheon of Olympians in this movie is mostly women and they are fierce. Come on - Ursula Andress as Aphrodite! The ethereral Judi Bowker as Andromeda and Siân Phillips as her mother Cassiopeia are serving it up on a platter and the Stygian Witches are giving gruesome threesome first time in drag on Halloween.  Throw in Pegasus, a little clockwork owl who speaks in whistles (and definitely isn't an R2-D2 ripoff) and the scariest incarnation of Medusa put on film and you have yourself a charming, nostalgic and super fun time. Thanks for listening and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts! www.patreon.com/moviesthatmadeusgay Facebook/Instagram: @moviesthatmadeusgay X (Twitter): @MTMUGPod Scott Youngbauer: X (Twitter) @oscarscott / Instagram @scottyoungballer Peter Lozano: X (Twitter)/Instagram @peterlasagna

Two + hours of  DramaFirst a look at this day in History.Then Suspense, originally broadcast March 27, 1948, 76 years ago, Night Must Fall starring Robert Montgomery.  The story of the rise and fall of a very clever British murderer and arsonist.Followed by Mr President starring Edward Arnold, originally broadcast March 27, 1949, 75 years ago, To the Victor Go the Spoils.  Which president is being dramatized?Then Theatre Royal, originally broadcast March 27, 1954, 70 years ago, A Tale of Two Cities starring Sir Laurence Olivier.  The drama is based on a leading character in "A Tale Of Two Cities."Finally Lum and Abner, originally broadcast March 27, 1942, 82 years ago, Detective Mousy Gray.  Mousey reports that "Operator XW9 is ready" to Fremont by way of Squire Skimp. However, Operator XW9 doesn't know much!Thanks to Richard for supporting our podcast by using the Buy Me a Coffee function at http://classicradio.streamIf you like what we do here, visit our friend Jay at http://radio.macinmind.com for great old time radio shows 24 hours a day. 

Welcome to season 3! We're kicking off this season with a couple of episodes on our favorite films from the Gothic Romance genre, and who better to start us off than the master of the macabre, Alfred Hitchcock? Rebecca, starring Joan Fontaine and Sir Laurence Olivier, was Hitchcock's first film made in the US and his only Best Picture winner. The film also earned an Oscar for cinematographer George Barnes, whose talents with light, shadow, and camera movement created the moody atmosphere that pervades Rebecca. It was produced by David O. Selznick, who was coming off the huge success of Gone with the Wind and looking to make another big hit. Deeply faithful to its source material, Daphne du Maurier's best-selling novel, the film is a suspenseful cinematic take on classic Gothic Romance literature. The parallels with Bronte's Jane Eyre are numerous, but it's Hitchcock's ability to dramatize psychological terror that brings this movie into the modern age. Come to Manderley again with us, and watch out for Mrs. Danvers!

Two hours of DramaFirst a look at this day in History.Then Dr Christian starring Gene Hersholdt, originally broadcast January 2, 1938, 86 years ago, The Kidnapped Husband. A woman's husband has been kidnapped. Followed by Theatre Royale, originally broadcast January 2, 1954, 70 years ago, Country of the Blind. In the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is not always king! Sir Laurence Olivier hosts and stars in the adaptation of the HG Wells story. . Then Suspense, originally broadcast January 2, 1947, 77 years ago, The Tree of Life starring Mark Stevens. A man who enters the wrong house and interrupts a gang of murderers at work.Followed by Dark Fantasy, originally broadcast January 2, 1942, 82 years ago, Resolution 1841. A traditional visit to an old house seems too familiar to a newcomer. Finally Lum and Abner, originally broadcast January 2, 1942, 82 years ago, Mousy Vs Iron Ike. Even though he has the Mumps, Mousie shows up for the fight and is floored with one punch.

This week we stay in France but time travel back to the Elizabethan era as we discuss Sir Laurence Olivier's version of “Henry V”. Join the gang as they discuss why people hate Shakespeare, the transition from the Globe Theatre to the battlefield of Agincourt, and the differences between this and the Kenneth Branagh version. Also, this week Britt recommends “Inh-Oh” (on Hulu), Joey recommends “A Knight's Tale” (on Hulu), and Adam recommends “Much Ado About Nothing” (on Prime, Hoopla, or Tubi).   You can listen to us on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Spotify, & Google Play. You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, & Facebook at facebook.com/1001by1. You can send us an email at 1001by1@gmail.com. Intro/Outro music is “Bouncy Gypsy Beats” by John Bartmann.

Carl is joined by actor Simon Jones, whose distinguished career has included King George V on "Downton Abbey", stage productions on Broadway and the West End,  and his current role as Bannister on HBO's "The Gilded Age".Simon takes us backstage as he discusses his career from his earliest roles, including in the radio drama version of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and film version, his role as Brideshead in the iconic 1981 adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited", and his work with John Cleese and "the Pythons" among others.  Simon also discusses his experiences with his many well-known co-stars and colleagues over the years, including Sir Laurence Olivier, Dame Maggie Smith,  Lauren Bacall, Penelope Keith and Angela Lansbury.  In addition, Simon takes us behind the cameras and shares some fascinating insight on creating the role of Bannister on HBO's "The Gilded Age". 

In the pop culture pantheon there are those few and proud performers who have indelibly imprinted the landscape to the point where our digital age invites new fans to discover and embrace their iconic work. Among these are Dinah Manoff and JoBeth Williams.Dinah breathed delightful life into Pink Lady Marty Maraschino in Grease. She has starred in Soap, Empty Nest and Neil Simon's You Oughta Be In Pictures. JoBeth's portrayal of Diane Freeling in Poltergeist is on repeat every Halloween and her turn in the generation-defining drama, The Big Chill is a boomer must. These two ground-breaking creators have much to share with us, including their exciting new projects.Dinah's brilliantly hilarious work of fiction is called The Real True Hollywood Story of Jackie Gold. We recommend you listen to the audio version, performed by a cast of gifted actors. Dinah wrote what she knows but not exactly. Jackie is a world famous, tabloid darling narrating her story from deep within a coma induced by an ill-fated, paparazzi dodging balcony leap. Dinah was simply raised by show-biz parents Lee Grant and Arnold Manoff in the star-sprinkled Malibu Colony.Dinah shares her mom's journey from being Dinah's harshest critic to her biggest fan girl, and the harrowing story of her dad's McCarthy-era blacklisting. We also learn how Dinah's parenting of her own kids has taken a very different path.JoBeth is currently starring, with Peter Strauss in the stage play, Love Among The Ruins. It is running through November 5th at North Hollywood's El Portal Theatre. JoBeth and Peter are taking on roles portrayed by Katharine Hepburn and Sir Laurence Olivier and rising beautifully to that challenge!She comes to us with spooky, inside-Poltergeist secrets, corset-wearing horror stories from Wyatt Earp, and tips on how to handle a nude scene with a five-year-old co-star from Kramer vs. Kramer. And, as President emeritus, JoBeth shares how we can all lend assistance to struggling actors through the SAG-AFTRA Foundation.Plus, Weezy is strongly recommending Timothy Egan's disturbing examination of the KKK in the 1920s, A Fever In The Heartland. And Fritz is very keen on Ken Burns' American Buffalo on PBS and Amazon Prime. All that plus an inspiring clip from Illinois Governor J.B. Prtizker's moving Northwestern commencement speech.Path Points of Interest:Dinah ManoffThe Real True Hollywood Story of Jackie Gold by Dinah Manoff on AmazonThe Real True Hollywood Story of Jackie Gold paperback book buy linkDinah Manoff on WikipediaDinah Manoff on IMDBJoBeth WilliamsLove Among The RuinsSee Love Among the Ruins at The El PortalJoBeth Williams on WikipediaJoBeth Williams on IMDBSAG-AFTRA FoundationA Fever In The Heartland by Timothy EganAmerican Buffalo - PBS/PrimeGovernor Prtizker's Northwestern commencement speech

Mindi presents the new sesson of The Big Show 1951-09-30 (028) Tallulah Bankhead, George Sanders, Vivian Leigh, Sir Laurence Olivier, etc.

Mindi brings us The Big Show 1951-09-30 (028) Tallulah Bankhead, George Sanders, Vivian Leigh, Sir Laurence Olivier , etc.

Get ready for a spooktacular Saturday Matinee on Vintage Classic Radio as Halloween draws near! We're bringing you three timeless shows that'll send shivers down your spine and tickle your funny bone. First up is a bone-chilling classic, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," originally broadcasted by NBC's "Favorite Story" radio show on May 29th, 1948. In this eerie tale, you'll follow the hapless schoolteacher Ichabod Crane as he ventures into the haunted town of Sleepy Hollow, encountering the menacing Headless Horseman. The cast includes renowned radio actors like Ronald Colman, Hans Conried, and Gerald Mohr, who bring Washington Irving's legendary story to life. Next, join the hilariously haunted antics in "The Canterville Ghost," originally aired on December 26th, 1953, on "Theatre Royal," hosted by none other than the legendary Sir Laurence Olivier. This humorous short story by Oscar Wilde, first published in 1887, tells the tale of an American family's uproarious encounters with the ghostly Sir Simon of Canterville. The star-studded cast features Sir Laurence Olivier himself, along with Peggy Ashcroft, Esmond Knight, and Alan Wheatley, guaranteeing a spirited performance. Finally, we'll have you in stitches with "The Jack Benny Program" from October 31st, 1948. Join the iconic comedian Jack Benny as he embarks on a side-splitting Halloween adventure, "Trick or Treating with The Beavers." Jack's comedic genius is on full display as he navigates the quirks of the holiday with his ensemble cast, including Mary Livingstone, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, and Don Wilson. Tune in this Saturday for a spellbinding lineup of vintage radio that's perfect for getting into the Halloween spirit!

SynopsisOn today's date in 1984, the Milwaukee Symphony and conductor Lukas Foss premiered a new work for narrator and orchestra by American composer John Corigliano. The new piece was titled Creations,” and was based on the creation story in the Biblical book of Genesis.Creations began as a 1971 commission for a television pilot. The original idea was to have a variety of major composers illustrate in music selected chapters from the Bible, with the text narrated by Sir Laurence Olivier. The TV project fell through, and Corigliano thought this music for the pilot episode, Genesis, would remain unheard. But then, in 1984, Lukas Foss commissioned a revised version for a concert with the Milwaukee Symphony.“Creations challenged me to write specifically for a recorded medium,” wrote Corigliano. “It also offered a chance to build music more abstractly than I'd done before… often out of pure sonority, rather than harmony and line. Much of my later work uses techniques I developed for the first time while scoring Creations… I envisioned the music as growing from abstract sounds into actual themes.”Music Played in Today's ProgramJohn Corigliano (b. 1938) Creations Sir Ian McKellen, narrator; I Fiamminghi; Rudolf Werthen, cond. Telarc 80421

Murder by Decree is a 1979 mystery thriller directed by Bob Clark (Director of ‘Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things' and 'Dead of Night' (not the brilliant black and white British film from 1945 - featured in episode 13, but the 1974 American film ), he also directed ‘Black Christmas', ‘Porkys' and ‘Porkys 2' Murder by Decree was written by playwright John Hopkins, who scripted the Bond film Thunderball, and the Alec Guinness TV version of Smileys People. Hopkins referenced Conan Doyle's work, particularly Holmes' deduction and science skills but downplayed other aspects of the characters, such as Holmes' drug use, in favour of making them more likeable and human.Peter O'Toole was originally cast as Sherlock Holmes, and Sir Laurence Olivier was cast as Dr. Watson. But the two actors had not worked well together in the past, and were unable to overcome their differences for this movie. Rather, Holmes is played by Christopher (Captain Georg von Trapp) Plummer and Dr. Watson is played by James Mason.Plummer, described by IMDB as“ perhaps Canada's greatest thespian”, turned down the role of Gandalf in Sir Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, and admits to regretting that decision. Question for James and Jon? Christopher Plummer had two roles in common with Peter Cushing, can you name them?James Mason reportedly, he once saved the life of Max Bygraves' son at a party at Judy Garland's house. The boy fell into the pool and Max did not notice. James Mason did and, fully clothed, he jumped into the water and pulled him out. He was scheduled to play James Bond in a 1958 television adaptation of "From Russia with Love", which was ultimately never produced. Later, despite being in his 50s, Mason was a contender to play Bond in Dr. No before Sean Connery was cast. He later turned down the role of Hugo Drax in the James Bond film Moonraker, which went to Michael Lonsdale.In his autobiography, "In Spite of Myself", Plummer noted that Mason was the best Watson he had seen, and that his death halted a proposed furthering of their on-screen partnership.The film also features:David Hemmings (Blow Up, Deep Red, Brabarella, Gladiator, Magnum Pi and Airwolf) as Inspector Foxborough, Anthony Quayle (Lawrence of Arbia, The Guns of Navarone) as Sir Charles Warren, Frank Finlay (Lifeforce, The Three Musketeers) as Inspector Lestrade, Geneviève Bujold as Annie Crook, Susan Clark as Mary Kelly, John Gielgud as Prime Minister Lord Salisbury, Donald Sutherland as Robert Lees and the Mighty June Brown as Anne ChapmanThe film's premise of the plot behind the murders is influenced by the book Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, by Stephen Knight, who presumed that the killings were part of a Masonic plot. The original script contained the names of the historical suspects, Sir William Gull and John Netley. In the actual film, they are represented by fictional analogues: Thomas Spivy (Gull) and William Slade (Netley). This theory on the perpetrators of the killings is featured in a number of other Jack the Ripper-themed fictions, including the graphic novel ‘From Hell'.The replica nineteenth century dockland set took two months and fifty men to construct at Shepperton Studio's largest soundstage. The set also included a replica muddy Thames River, Alien was shooting concurrently in the same studios.Support the show by buying from our affiliate links…https://tinyurl.com/Murder-Decree-Blu-rayhttps://tinyurl.com/Murder-Decree-DVDhttps://tinyurl.com/From-Hell-Bookhttps://tinyurl.com/From-Hell-Companion-bookhttps://tinyurl.com/The-Five-Book Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/general-witchfinders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Listen in to Part 1 as Tom and Bert go through Movies that they consider to be "Hidden Gems" or under the radar movies that were amazingly entertaining and a worth a watch. What these movies have in common is the star power and appeal though they never were Box Office Blockbusters. Tom covers "Independence Day", NOT the Will Smith Blockbuster, with Dianne Wiest, "Searching for Bobby Fischer", "Best in Show" with Eugene Levy and Fred Willard and "Strictly Ballroom" among others.Bert covers "Sleuth" with Michael Caine and Sir Laurence Olivier, "The Vanishing", "The Conversation" and Wes Craven's thriller "Red Eye" among others.Please give us feedback at our Facebook page, Reel Dealz Podcast: Movies & Music Thru the Decades or you can email us at reeldealzmoviesandmusic@gmail.com and leave comments and suggestions.Thanks again for listening, we appreciate it!

Stuart and Jacob have gone back to not just the Shakespeare well, but the well of "modern day Shakespeare retellings that feature the source materials dialogue". One takes place in an olde Denmark, while the other sees itself in high rises and corporate structures as a part of a New York setting. Is on better than the other, and can the magic of the Romeo & Juliet episode be recaptured?! Also in this episode are Stuart running the media gamut, lauding of the late Sir Laurence Olivier, bewilderment at the inclusion of Bill Murray in a Shakespeare production, and a surprise visit from Eartha Kitt. All this and more on They Remade It! Plot Synopsis Timestamps: 22:05 - 29:38 ---------- Socials ---------- @ItRemade on Twitter theyremadeit@gmail.com

In this episode I discuss with author Michelle Morgan about her lates book "When Marilyn Met the Queen: Marilyn Monroe's Life in England" which was published by Pegasus Books and is available for purchase. In July 1956, Marilyn Monroe arrived in London—on honeymoon with her husband Arthur Miller—to make The Prince and the Showgirl with Sir Laurence Olivier. It was meant to be a happy time . . .Doug Hess is the host!

The brilliant singer-songwriter, David Pomeranz, has achieved success in virtually every entertainment medium. His songs have been recorded and performed by a long list of major artists including: Bette Midler, Kenny Loggins, Cliff Richard, Freddie Mercury, Kenny Rogers, Glen Campbell, Lou Rawls, John Denver, Missy Elliott, and Barry Manilow, who had international #1 hits with David's “Tryin' to Get the Feeling Again,” and “The Old Songs.” David's concert performances have delighted audiences worldwide. His recording and songwriting projects have earned him a total of 22 platinum and 18 gold albums, selling over 40 million records worldwide.At 19, Decca records signed David to a multi-album solo contract. He subsequently toured extensively with artists like: The Carpenters, Steely Dan, Air Supply, Randy Newman, Rod Stewart, The Doors and many more. David's solo albums include: "It's in Every One of Us,” "The Truth of Us,” “Time to Fly”, “New Blues,” “On This Day,” and “The Eyes of Christmas.”He's performed sold out concerts at The Kennedy Center, Hollywood Bowl, London Hippodrome, Universal Amphitheater, and hundreds more. David has written music and lyrics for major Motion Pictures like: "Big” and “King Kong." On TV, his songs have been featured on "Will and Grace,” “The Summer Olympic Games,” "Boston Legal,” “American Idol,” and Showtime's “Elvis Presley's Graceland,” for which he composed the score. He's also contributed songs to the hit London Musical, “Time,” starring Cliff Richard and Sir Laurence Olivier. For the Charlie Chaplin-based musical, “Little Tramp,' David wrote music, lyrics, and co-wrote the book with Steven Horwich. He also composed music for the Dickens classic, “A Tale of Two Cities” with lyrics by Steven Horwich and book by Steven Horwich and David Soames. And he composed the Tony-nominated musical, “Scandalous,” with Kathie Lee Gifford and composer, David Friedman.Beyond all that, David also hosts “SongSessions with David Pomeranz,” a popular podcast in which David talks shop with some of the most iconic songwriters of our time. Guests have included: Richard Marx, Melissa Manchester, Barry Mann, Paul Williams, Barry Manilow, Alan Bergman and more. SongSessions can be found at davidpomeranz.com and on major apps and platforms. 

Welcome to our first episode of the new year, which is also our first episode of Season 5. Thank you for continuing to join us on this amazing journey. On today's episode, we head back to Christmas of 1980, when pop music superstar Neil Diamond would be making his feature acting debut in a new version of The Jazz Singer. ----more---- EPISODE TRANSCRIPT From Los Angeles, California, the entertainment capital of the world, this is The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   It's 2023, which means we are starting our fifth season. And for our first episode of this new season, we're going back to the end of 1980, to take a look back at what was supposed to be the launch of a new phase in the career of one of music's biggest stars. That musical star was Neil Diamond, and this would end up becoming his one and only attempt to act in a motion picture.   We're talking about The Jazz Singer.   As I have said time and time again, I don't really have a plan for this show. I talk about the movies and subjects I talk about often on a whim. I'll hear about something and I'll be reminded of something, and a few days later, I've got an episode researched, written, recorded, edited and out there in the world. As I was working on the previous episode, about The War of the Roses just before my trip to Thailand, I saw a video of Neil Diamond singing Sweet Caroline on opening night of A Beautiful Noise, a new Broadway musical about the life and music of Mr. Diamond. I hadn't noticed Diamond had stopped performing live five years earlier due to a diagnosis of Parkinson's, and it was very touching to watch a thousand people joyously singing along with the man.   But as I was watching that video, I was reminded of The Jazz Singer, a movie we previously covered very lightly three years ago as part of our episode on the distribution company Associated Film Distribution. I was reminded that I haven't seen the movie in over forty years, even though I remember rather enjoying it when it opened in theatres in December 1980. I think I saw it four or five times over the course of a month, and I even went out and bought the soundtrack album, which I easily listened to a hundred times before the start of summer.   But we're getting ahead of ourselves yet again.   The Jazz Singer began its life in 1917, when Samson Raphaelson, a twenty-three year old undergraduate at the University of Illinois, attended a performance of Robinson Crusoe, Jr., in Champaign, IL. The star of that show was thirty-year-old Al Jolson, a Russian-born Jew who had been a popular performer on Broadway stages for fifteen years by this point, regularly performing in blackface. After graduation, Raphaelson would become an advertising executive in New York City, but on the side, he would write stories. One short story, called “The Day of Atonement,” would be a thinly fictionalized account of Al Jolson's life. It would be published in Everybody's Magazine in January 1922.   At the encouragement of his secretary at the advertising firm, Raphaelson would adapted his story into a play, which would be produced on Broadway in September 1925 with a new title…   The Jazz Singer.   Ironically, for a Broadway show based on the early life of Al Jolson, Jolson was not a part of the production. The part of Jake Rabinowitz, the son of a cantor who finds success on Broadway with the Anglicized named Jack Robin, would be played by George Jessel. The play would be a minor hit, running for 303 performances on Broadway before closing in June 1926, and Warner Brothers would buy the movie rights the same week the show closed. George Jessel would be signed to play his stage role in the movie version. The film was scheduled to go into production in May 1927.   There are a number of reasons why Jessel would not end up making the movie. After the success of two Warner movies in 1926 using Vitaphone, a sound-on-disc system that could play music synchronized to a motion picture, Warner Brothers reconcieved The Jazz Singer as a sound movie, but not just a movie with music synchronized to the images on screen, but a “talkie,” where, for the first time for a motion picture, actual dialogue and vocal songs would be synchronized to the pictures on screen. When he learned about this development, Jessel demanded more money.    The Warner Brothers refused.   Then Jessel had some concerns about the solvency of the studio. These would be valid concerns, as Harry Warner, the eldest of the four eponymous brothers who ran the studio, had sold nearly $4m worth of his personal stock to keep the company afloat just a few months earlier.   But what ended up driving Jessel away was a major change screenwriter Alfred A. Cohen made when adapting the original story and the play into the screenplay. Instead of leaving the theatre and becoming a cantor like his father, as it was written for the stage, the movie would end with Jack Robin performing on Broadway in blackface while his mom cheers him on from one of the box seats.   With Jessel off the project, Warner would naturally turn to… Eddie Cantor. Like Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor was a Jew of Russian descent, although, unlike Jolson, he had been born in New York City. Like Jolson, he had been a star on Broadway for years, regularly performing in and writing songs for Florenz Ziegfeld' annual Follies shows. And like Jolson, Cantor would regularly appear on stage in blackface. But Cantor, a friend of Jessel's, instead offered to help the studio get Jessel back on the movie. The studio instead went to their third choice…   Al Jolson.   You know. The guy whose life inspired the darn story to begin with.   Many years later, film historian Robert Carringer would note that, in 1927, George Jessel was a vaudeville comedian with one successful play and one modestly successful movie to his credit, while Jolson was one of the biggest stars in America. In fact, when The Vitaphone Company was trying to convince American studios to try their sound-on-disc system for movies, they would hire Jolson in the fall of 1926 for a ten minute test film. It would be the success of the short film, titled A Plantation Act and featuring Jolson in blackface singing three songs, that would convince Warners to take a chance with The Jazz Singer as the first quote unquote talkie film.   I'll have a link to A Plantation Act on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, if you're interested in seeing it.   Al Jolson signed on to play the character inspired by himself for $75,000 in May 1927, the equivalent to $1.28m today. Filming would be pushed back to June 1927, in part due to Jolson still being on tour with another show until the end of the month. Warners would begin production on the film in New York City in late June, starting with second unit shots of the Lower East Side and The Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway, shooting as much as they could until Jolson arrived on set on July 11th.   Now, while the film has been regularly touted for nearly a century now as the first talking motion picture, the truth is, there's very little verbal dialogue in the film. The vast majority of dialogue in the movie was still handled with the traditional silent movie use of caption cards, and the very few scenes featuring what would be synchronized dialogue were saved for the end of production, due to the complexity of how those scenes would be captured. But the film would finish shooting in mid-September.   The $422k movie would have its world premiere at the Warner Brothers theatre in New York City not three weeks later, on October 6th, 1927, where the film would become a sensation. Sadly, none of the Warner Brothers would attend the premiere, as Sam Warner, the strongest advocate for Vitaphone at the studio, had died of pneumonia the night before the premiere, and his remaining brothers stayed in Los Angeles for the funeral. The reviews were outstanding, and the film would bring more than $2.5m in rental fees back to the studio.   At the first Academy Awards, held in May 1929 to honor the films released between August 1927 and July 1928, The Jazz Singer was deemed ineligible for the two highest awards, Outstanding Production, now known as Best Picture, and Unique and Artistic Production, which would only be awarded this one time, on the grounds that it would have been unfair to a sound picture compete against all the other silent films. Ironically, by the time the second Academy Awards were handed out, in April 1930, silent films would practically be a thing of the past. The success of The Jazz Singer had been that much a tectonic shift in the industry. The film would receive one Oscar nomination, for Alfred Cohn's screenplay adaptation, while the Warner Brothers would be given a special award for producing The Jazz Singer, the “pioneer outstanding talking picture which has revolutionized the industry,” as the inscription on the award read.   There would be a remake of The Jazz Singer produced in 1952, starring Danny Thomas as Korean War veteran who, thankfully, leaves the blackface in the past, and a one-hour television adaptation of the story in 1959, starring Jerry Lewis. And if that sounds strange to you, Jerry Lewis, at the height of his post-Lewis and Martin success, playing a man torn between his desire to be a successful performer and his shattered relationship with his cantor father… well, you can see it for yourself, if you desire, on the page for this episode on our website. It is as strange as it sounds.   At this point, we're going to fast forward a number of years in our story.   In the 1970s, Neil Diamond became one of the biggest musical stars in America. While he wanted to be a singer, Diamond would get his first big success in music in the 1960s as a songwriter, including writing two songs that would become big hits for The Monkees: I'm a Believer and A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You.   And really quickly, let me throw out a weird coincidence here… Bob Rafelson, the creator of The Monkees who would go on to produce and/or direct such films as Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces, was the nephew of Samson Raphaelson, the man who wrote the original story on which The Jazz Singer is based.   Anyway, after finding success as a songwriter, Diamond would become a major singing star with hits like Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon, Sweet Caroline, and Song Sung Blue. And in another weird coincidence, by 1972, Neil Diamond would become the first performer since Al Jolson to stage a one-man show at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway.   By 1976, Neil Diamond is hosting specials on television, and one person who would see one of Diamond's television specials was a guy named Jerry Leider, an executive at Warner Brothers in charge of foreign feature production. Leider sees something in Diamond that just night be suited for the movies, not unlike Elvis Presley or Barbra Streisand, who in 1976 just happens to be the star of a remake of A Star Is Born for Warner Brothers that is cleaning up at the box office and at records stores nationwide. Leider is so convinced Neil Diamond has that X Factor, that unquantifiable thing that turns mere mortals into superstars, that Leider quits his job at Warners to start his own movie production company, wrestling the story rights to The Jazz Singer from Warner Brothers and United Artists, both of whom claimed ownership of the story, so he can make his own version with Diamond as the star.   So, naturally, a former Warners Brothers executive wanting to remake one of the most iconic movies in the Warner Brothers library is going to set it up at Warner Brothers, right?   Nope!   In the fall of 1977, Leider makes a deal with MGM to make the movie. Diamond signs on to play the lead, even before a script is written, and screenwriter Stephen H. Foreman is brought in to update the vaudeville-based original story into the modern day while incorporating Diamond's strengths as a songwriter to inform the story. But just before the film was set to shoot in September 1978, MGM would drop the movie, as some executives were worried the film would be perceived as being, and I am quoting Mr. Foreman here, “too Jewish.”   American Film Distribution, the American distribution arm of British production companies ITC and EMI, would pick the film up in turnaround, and set a May 1979 production start date. Sidney J. Furie, the Canadian filmmaker who had directed Diana Ross in Lady Sings the Blues, would be hired to direct, and Jacqueline Bisset was pursued to play the lead female role, but her agent priced their client out of the running. Deborah Raffin would be cast instead. And to help bring the kids in, the producers would sign Sir Laurence Olivier to play Diamond's father, Cantor Rabinovitch. Sir Larry would get a cool million dollars for ten weeks of work.   There would, as always is with the case of making movies, be setbacks that would further delay the start of production. First, Diamond would hurt his back at the end of 1978, and needed to go in for surgery in early January 1979. Although Diamond had already written and recorded all the music that was going to be used in the movie, AFD considered replacing Diamond with Barry Manilow, who had also never starred in a movie before, but they would stick with their original star.   After nearly a year of rest, Diamond was ready to begin, and cameras would roll on the $10m production on January 7th, 1980. And, as always is with the case of making movies, there would be more setbacks as soon as production began. Diamond, uniquely aware of just how little training he had as an actor, struggled to find his place on set, especially when working with an actor of Sir Laurence Olivier's stature. Director Furie, who was never satisfied with the screenplay, ordered writer Foreman to come up with new scenes that would help lessen the burden Diamond was placing on himself and the production. The writer would balk at almost every single suggestion, and eventually walked off the film.   Herbert Baker, an old school screenwriter who had worked on several of the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis movies, was brought in to punch up the script, but he would end up completely rewriting the film, even though the movie had been in production for a few weeks. Baker and Furie would spend every moment the director wasn't actively working on set reworking the story, changing the Deborah Raffin character so much she would leave the production. Her friend Lucie Arnaz, the daughter of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, would take over the role, after Cher, Liza Minnelli and Donna Summer were considered.   Sensing an out of control production, Sir Lew Grade, the British media titan owner of AFD, decided a change was needed. He would shut the production down on March 3rd, 1980, and fire director Furie. While Baker continued to work on the script, Sir Grade would find a new director in Richard Fleischer, the journeyman filmmaker whose credits in the 1950s and 1960s included such films as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Compulsion, Fantastic Voyage and Doctor Doolittle, but had fallen out of favor with most studios after a string of flops. In fact, this would be the second film in a year where Fleischer was hired to replace another director during the middle of production, having replaced Richard C. Sarafian on the action-adventure film Ashanti in 1979.   With Fleischer aboard, production on The Jazz Singer would resume in late March, and there was an immediate noticeable difference on set. Where Furie and many members of the crew would regularly defer to Diamond due to his stature as an entertainer, letting the singer spiral out of control if things weren't working right, Fleischer would calm the actor down and help work him back into the scene. Except for one scene, set in a recording studio, where Diamond's character needed to explode into anger. After a few takes that didn't go as well as he hoped, Diamond went into the recording booth where his movie band was stationed while Fleischer was resetting the shot, when the director noticed Diamond working himself into a rage. The director called “action,” and Diamond nailed the take as needed. When the director asked Diamond how he got to that moment, the singer said he was frustrated with himself that he wasn't hitting the scene right, and asked the band to play something that would make him angry. The band obliged.    What did they play?   A Barry Manilow song.   Despite the recasting of the leading female role, a change of director and a number of rewrites by two different writers during the production, the film was able to finish shooting at the end of April with only $3m added to the budget.   Associated Film would set a December 19th, 1980 release date for the film, while Capitol Records, owned at the time by EMI, would release the first single from the soundtrack, a soft-rock ballad called Love on the Rocks, in October, with the full soundtrack album arriving in stores a month later.   As expected for a new Neil Diamond song, Love on the Rocks was an immediate hit, climbing the charts all the way to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100.   Several days before the film opened in 241 theatres on December 19th, there was a huge, star-studded premiere at the Plitt Century Plaza Cinemas in Los Angeles. Peter Falk, Harvey Korman, Ed McMahon, Gregory Peck, Cesar Romero and Jon Voight were just a handful of the Hollywood community who came out to attend what was one of the biggest Hollywood premieres in years. That would seem to project a confidence in the movie from the distributor's standpoint.   Or so you'd think.   But as it turned out, The Jazz Singer was one of three movies Associated Film would release that day. Along with The Jazz Singer, they would release the British mystery film The Mirror Crack'd starring Angela Lansbury and Elizabeth Taylor, and the Richard Donner drama Inside Moves. Of the three movies, The Jazz Singer would gross the most that weekend, pulling in a modest $1.167m, versus The Mirror Crack'd's $608k from 340 screens, and Inside Moves's $201k from 67 screens.   But compared to Clint Eastwood's Any Which Way You Can, the Richard Pryor/Gene Wilder comedy Stir Crazy, and Dolly Parton/Lily Tomlin/Jane Fonda comedy 9 to 5, it wasn't the best opening they could hope for.   But the film would continue to play… well, if not exceptional, at least it would hold on to its intended audience for a while. Sensing the film needed some help, Capitol Records released a second single from the soundtrack, another power ballad called Hello Again, in January 1981, which would become yet another top ten hit for Diamond. A third single, the pro-immigration power-pop song America, would arrive in April 1981 and go to number eight on the charts, but by then, the film was out of theatres with a respectable $27.12m in tickets sold.   Contemporary reviews of the film were rather negative, especially towards Diamond as an actor. Roger Ebert noted in his review that there were so many things wrong in the film that the review was threatening to become a list of cinematic atrocities. His review buddy Gene Siskel did praise Lucie Arnaz's performance, while pointing out how out of touch the new story was with the immigrant story told by the original film. Many critics would also point out the cringe-worthy homage to the original film, where Diamond unnecessarily performs in blackface, as well as Olivier's overacting.   I recently watched the film for the first time since 1981, and it's not a great movie by any measurable metric. Diamond isn't as bad an actor as the reviews make him out to be, especially considering he's essentially playing an altered version of himself, a successful pop singer, and Lucie Arnaz is fairly good. The single best performance in the film comes from Caitlin Adams, playing Jess's wife Rivka, who, for me, is the emotional center of the film. And yes, Olivier really goes all-in on the scenery chewing. At times, it's truly painful to watch this great actor spin out of control.   There would be a few awards nominations for the film, including acting nominations for Diamond and Arnaz at the 1981 Golden Globes, and a Grammy nomination for Best Soundtrack Album, but most of its quote unquote awards would come from the atrocious Golden Raspberry organization, which would name Diamond the Worst Actor of the year and Olivier the Worst Supporting Actor during its first quote unquote ceremony, which was held in some guy's living room.   Ironically but not so surprisingly, while the film would be vaguely profitable for its producers, it would be the soundtrack to the movie that would bring in the lion's share of the profits. On top of three hit singles, the soundtrack album would sell more than five million copies just in the United States in 1980 and 1981, and would also go platinum in Canada, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. While he would earn less than half a million dollars from the film, Diamond's cut of the soundtrack would net him a dollar per unit sold, earning him more than ten times his salary as an actor.   And although I fancied myself a punk and new wave kid at the end of 1980, I bought the soundtrack to The Jazz Singer, ostensibly as a gift for my mom, who loved Neil Diamond, but I easily wore out the grooves of the album listening to it over and over again. Of the ten new songs he wrote for the soundtrack, there's a good two or three additional tracks that weren't released as singles, including a short little ragtime-inspired ditty called On the Robert E. Lee, but America is the one song from the soundtrack I am still drawn to today. It's a weirdly uplifting song with its rhythmic “today” chants that end the song that just makes me feel good despite its inherent cheesiness.   After The Jazz Singer, Neil Diamond would only appear as himself in a film. Lucie Arnaz would never quite have much of a career after the film, although she would work quote regularly in television during the 80s and 90s, including a short stint as the star of The Lucie Arnaz Show, which lasted six episodes in 1985 before being cancelled. Laurence Olivier would continue to play supporting roles in a series of not so great motion pictures and television movies and miniseries for several more years, until his passing in 1989. And director Richard Fleischer would make several bad movies, including Red Sonja and Million Dollar Mystery, until he retired from filmmaking in 1987.   As we noted in our February 2020 episode about AFD, the act of releasing three movies on the same day was a last, desperate move in order to pump some much needed capital into the company. And while The Jazz Singer would bring some money in, that wasn't enough to cover the losses from the other two movies released the same day, or several other underperforming films released earlier in the year such as the infamous Village People movie Can't Stop the Music and Raise the Titanic. Sir Lew Grade would close AFD down in early 1981, and sell several movies that were completed, in production or in pre-production to Universal Studios. Ironically, those movies might have saved the company had they been able to hang on a little longer, as they included such films as The Dark Crystal, Frances, On Golden Pond, Sophie's Choice and Tender Mercies.   Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again soon, when Episode 99 is released.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about Neil Diamond and The Jazz Singer.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.

Welcome to our first episode of the new year, which is also our first episode of Season 5. Thank you for continuing to join us on this amazing journey. On today's episode, we head back to Christmas of 1980, when pop music superstar Neil Diamond would be making his feature acting debut in a new version of The Jazz Singer. ----more---- EPISODE TRANSCRIPT From Los Angeles, California, the entertainment capital of the world, this is The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   It's 2023, which means we are starting our fifth season. And for our first episode of this new season, we're going back to the end of 1980, to take a look back at what was supposed to be the launch of a new phase in the career of one of music's biggest stars. That musical star was Neil Diamond, and this would end up becoming his one and only attempt to act in a motion picture.   We're talking about The Jazz Singer.   As I have said time and time again, I don't really have a plan for this show. I talk about the movies and subjects I talk about often on a whim. I'll hear about something and I'll be reminded of something, and a few days later, I've got an episode researched, written, recorded, edited and out there in the world. As I was working on the previous episode, about The War of the Roses just before my trip to Thailand, I saw a video of Neil Diamond singing Sweet Caroline on opening night of A Beautiful Noise, a new Broadway musical about the life and music of Mr. Diamond. I hadn't noticed Diamond had stopped performing live five years earlier due to a diagnosis of Parkinson's, and it was very touching to watch a thousand people joyously singing along with the man.   But as I was watching that video, I was reminded of The Jazz Singer, a movie we previously covered very lightly three years ago as part of our episode on the distribution company Associated Film Distribution. I was reminded that I haven't seen the movie in over forty years, even though I remember rather enjoying it when it opened in theatres in December 1980. I think I saw it four or five times over the course of a month, and I even went out and bought the soundtrack album, which I easily listened to a hundred times before the start of summer.   But we're getting ahead of ourselves yet again.   The Jazz Singer began its life in 1917, when Samson Raphaelson, a twenty-three year old undergraduate at the University of Illinois, attended a performance of Robinson Crusoe, Jr., in Champaign, IL. The star of that show was thirty-year-old Al Jolson, a Russian-born Jew who had been a popular performer on Broadway stages for fifteen years by this point, regularly performing in blackface. After graduation, Raphaelson would become an advertising executive in New York City, but on the side, he would write stories. One short story, called “The Day of Atonement,” would be a thinly fictionalized account of Al Jolson's life. It would be published in Everybody's Magazine in January 1922.   At the encouragement of his secretary at the advertising firm, Raphaelson would adapted his story into a play, which would be produced on Broadway in September 1925 with a new title…   The Jazz Singer.   Ironically, for a Broadway show based on the early life of Al Jolson, Jolson was not a part of the production. The part of Jake Rabinowitz, the son of a cantor who finds success on Broadway with the Anglicized named Jack Robin, would be played by George Jessel. The play would be a minor hit, running for 303 performances on Broadway before closing in June 1926, and Warner Brothers would buy the movie rights the same week the show closed. George Jessel would be signed to play his stage role in the movie version. The film was scheduled to go into production in May 1927.   There are a number of reasons why Jessel would not end up making the movie. After the success of two Warner movies in 1926 using Vitaphone, a sound-on-disc system that could play music synchronized to a motion picture, Warner Brothers reconcieved The Jazz Singer as a sound movie, but not just a movie with music synchronized to the images on screen, but a “talkie,” where, for the first time for a motion picture, actual dialogue and vocal songs would be synchronized to the pictures on screen. When he learned about this development, Jessel demanded more money.    The Warner Brothers refused.   Then Jessel had some concerns about the solvency of the studio. These would be valid concerns, as Harry Warner, the eldest of the four eponymous brothers who ran the studio, had sold nearly $4m worth of his personal stock to keep the company afloat just a few months earlier.   But what ended up driving Jessel away was a major change screenwriter Alfred A. Cohen made when adapting the original story and the play into the screenplay. Instead of leaving the theatre and becoming a cantor like his father, as it was written for the stage, the movie would end with Jack Robin performing on Broadway in blackface while his mom cheers him on from one of the box seats.   With Jessel off the project, Warner would naturally turn to… Eddie Cantor. Like Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor was a Jew of Russian descent, although, unlike Jolson, he had been born in New York City. Like Jolson, he had been a star on Broadway for years, regularly performing in and writing songs for Florenz Ziegfeld' annual Follies shows. And like Jolson, Cantor would regularly appear on stage in blackface. But Cantor, a friend of Jessel's, instead offered to help the studio get Jessel back on the movie. The studio instead went to their third choice…   Al Jolson.   You know. The guy whose life inspired the darn story to begin with.   Many years later, film historian Robert Carringer would note that, in 1927, George Jessel was a vaudeville comedian with one successful play and one modestly successful movie to his credit, while Jolson was one of the biggest stars in America. In fact, when The Vitaphone Company was trying to convince American studios to try their sound-on-disc system for movies, they would hire Jolson in the fall of 1926 for a ten minute test film. It would be the success of the short film, titled A Plantation Act and featuring Jolson in blackface singing three songs, that would convince Warners to take a chance with The Jazz Singer as the first quote unquote talkie film.   I'll have a link to A Plantation Act on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, if you're interested in seeing it.   Al Jolson signed on to play the character inspired by himself for $75,000 in May 1927, the equivalent to $1.28m today. Filming would be pushed back to June 1927, in part due to Jolson still being on tour with another show until the end of the month. Warners would begin production on the film in New York City in late June, starting with second unit shots of the Lower East Side and The Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway, shooting as much as they could until Jolson arrived on set on July 11th.   Now, while the film has been regularly touted for nearly a century now as the first talking motion picture, the truth is, there's very little verbal dialogue in the film. The vast majority of dialogue in the movie was still handled with the traditional silent movie use of caption cards, and the very few scenes featuring what would be synchronized dialogue were saved for the end of production, due to the complexity of how those scenes would be captured. But the film would finish shooting in mid-September.   The $422k movie would have its world premiere at the Warner Brothers theatre in New York City not three weeks later, on October 6th, 1927, where the film would become a sensation. Sadly, none of the Warner Brothers would attend the premiere, as Sam Warner, the strongest advocate for Vitaphone at the studio, had died of pneumonia the night before the premiere, and his remaining brothers stayed in Los Angeles for the funeral. The reviews were outstanding, and the film would bring more than $2.5m in rental fees back to the studio.   At the first Academy Awards, held in May 1929 to honor the films released between August 1927 and July 1928, The Jazz Singer was deemed ineligible for the two highest awards, Outstanding Production, now known as Best Picture, and Unique and Artistic Production, which would only be awarded this one time, on the grounds that it would have been unfair to a sound picture compete against all the other silent films. Ironically, by the time the second Academy Awards were handed out, in April 1930, silent films would practically be a thing of the past. The success of The Jazz Singer had been that much a tectonic shift in the industry. The film would receive one Oscar nomination, for Alfred Cohn's screenplay adaptation, while the Warner Brothers would be given a special award for producing The Jazz Singer, the “pioneer outstanding talking picture which has revolutionized the industry,” as the inscription on the award read.   There would be a remake of The Jazz Singer produced in 1952, starring Danny Thomas as Korean War veteran who, thankfully, leaves the blackface in the past, and a one-hour television adaptation of the story in 1959, starring Jerry Lewis. And if that sounds strange to you, Jerry Lewis, at the height of his post-Lewis and Martin success, playing a man torn between his desire to be a successful performer and his shattered relationship with his cantor father… well, you can see it for yourself, if you desire, on the page for this episode on our website. It is as strange as it sounds.   At this point, we're going to fast forward a number of years in our story.   In the 1970s, Neil Diamond became one of the biggest musical stars in America. While he wanted to be a singer, Diamond would get his first big success in music in the 1960s as a songwriter, including writing two songs that would become big hits for The Monkees: I'm a Believer and A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You.   And really quickly, let me throw out a weird coincidence here… Bob Rafelson, the creator of The Monkees who would go on to produce and/or direct such films as Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces, was the nephew of Samson Raphaelson, the man who wrote the original story on which The Jazz Singer is based.   Anyway, after finding success as a songwriter, Diamond would become a major singing star with hits like Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon, Sweet Caroline, and Song Sung Blue. And in another weird coincidence, by 1972, Neil Diamond would become the first performer since Al Jolson to stage a one-man show at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway.   By 1976, Neil Diamond is hosting specials on television, and one person who would see one of Diamond's television specials was a guy named Jerry Leider, an executive at Warner Brothers in charge of foreign feature production. Leider sees something in Diamond that just night be suited for the movies, not unlike Elvis Presley or Barbra Streisand, who in 1976 just happens to be the star of a remake of A Star Is Born for Warner Brothers that is cleaning up at the box office and at records stores nationwide. Leider is so convinced Neil Diamond has that X Factor, that unquantifiable thing that turns mere mortals into superstars, that Leider quits his job at Warners to start his own movie production company, wrestling the story rights to The Jazz Singer from Warner Brothers and United Artists, both of whom claimed ownership of the story, so he can make his own version with Diamond as the star.   So, naturally, a former Warners Brothers executive wanting to remake one of the most iconic movies in the Warner Brothers library is going to set it up at Warner Brothers, right?   Nope!   In the fall of 1977, Leider makes a deal with MGM to make the movie. Diamond signs on to play the lead, even before a script is written, and screenwriter Stephen H. Foreman is brought in to update the vaudeville-based original story into the modern day while incorporating Diamond's strengths as a songwriter to inform the story. But just before the film was set to shoot in September 1978, MGM would drop the movie, as some executives were worried the film would be perceived as being, and I am quoting Mr. Foreman here, “too Jewish.”   American Film Distribution, the American distribution arm of British production companies ITC and EMI, would pick the film up in turnaround, and set a May 1979 production start date. Sidney J. Furie, the Canadian filmmaker who had directed Diana Ross in Lady Sings the Blues, would be hired to direct, and Jacqueline Bisset was pursued to play the lead female role, but her agent priced their client out of the running. Deborah Raffin would be cast instead. And to help bring the kids in, the producers would sign Sir Laurence Olivier to play Diamond's father, Cantor Rabinovitch. Sir Larry would get a cool million dollars for ten weeks of work.   There would, as always is with the case of making movies, be setbacks that would further delay the start of production. First, Diamond would hurt his back at the end of 1978, and needed to go in for surgery in early January 1979. Although Diamond had already written and recorded all the music that was going to be used in the movie, AFD considered replacing Diamond with Barry Manilow, who had also never starred in a movie before, but they would stick with their original star.   After nearly a year of rest, Diamond was ready to begin, and cameras would roll on the $10m production on January 7th, 1980. And, as always is with the case of making movies, there would be more setbacks as soon as production began. Diamond, uniquely aware of just how little training he had as an actor, struggled to find his place on set, especially when working with an actor of Sir Laurence Olivier's stature. Director Furie, who was never satisfied with the screenplay, ordered writer Foreman to come up with new scenes that would help lessen the burden Diamond was placing on himself and the production. The writer would balk at almost every single suggestion, and eventually walked off the film.   Herbert Baker, an old school screenwriter who had worked on several of the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis movies, was brought in to punch up the script, but he would end up completely rewriting the film, even though the movie had been in production for a few weeks. Baker and Furie would spend every moment the director wasn't actively working on set reworking the story, changing the Deborah Raffin character so much she would leave the production. Her friend Lucie Arnaz, the daughter of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, would take over the role, after Cher, Liza Minnelli and Donna Summer were considered.   Sensing an out of control production, Sir Lew Grade, the British media titan owner of AFD, decided a change was needed. He would shut the production down on March 3rd, 1980, and fire director Furie. While Baker continued to work on the script, Sir Grade would find a new director in Richard Fleischer, the journeyman filmmaker whose credits in the 1950s and 1960s included such films as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Compulsion, Fantastic Voyage and Doctor Doolittle, but had fallen out of favor with most studios after a string of flops. In fact, this would be the second film in a year where Fleischer was hired to replace another director during the middle of production, having replaced Richard C. Sarafian on the action-adventure film Ashanti in 1979.   With Fleischer aboard, production on The Jazz Singer would resume in late March, and there was an immediate noticeable difference on set. Where Furie and many members of the crew would regularly defer to Diamond due to his stature as an entertainer, letting the singer spiral out of control if things weren't working right, Fleischer would calm the actor down and help work him back into the scene. Except for one scene, set in a recording studio, where Diamond's character needed to explode into anger. After a few takes that didn't go as well as he hoped, Diamond went into the recording booth where his movie band was stationed while Fleischer was resetting the shot, when the director noticed Diamond working himself into a rage. The director called “action,” and Diamond nailed the take as needed. When the director asked Diamond how he got to that moment, the singer said he was frustrated with himself that he wasn't hitting the scene right, and asked the band to play something that would make him angry. The band obliged.    What did they play?   A Barry Manilow song.   Despite the recasting of the leading female role, a change of director and a number of rewrites by two different writers during the production, the film was able to finish shooting at the end of April with only $3m added to the budget.   Associated Film would set a December 19th, 1980 release date for the film, while Capitol Records, owned at the time by EMI, would release the first single from the soundtrack, a soft-rock ballad called Love on the Rocks, in October, with the full soundtrack album arriving in stores a month later.   As expected for a new Neil Diamond song, Love on the Rocks was an immediate hit, climbing the charts all the way to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100.   Several days before the film opened in 241 theatres on December 19th, there was a huge, star-studded premiere at the Plitt Century Plaza Cinemas in Los Angeles. Peter Falk, Harvey Korman, Ed McMahon, Gregory Peck, Cesar Romero and Jon Voight were just a handful of the Hollywood community who came out to attend what was one of the biggest Hollywood premieres in years. That would seem to project a confidence in the movie from the distributor's standpoint.   Or so you'd think.   But as it turned out, The Jazz Singer was one of three movies Associated Film would release that day. Along with The Jazz Singer, they would release the British mystery film The Mirror Crack'd starring Angela Lansbury and Elizabeth Taylor, and the Richard Donner drama Inside Moves. Of the three movies, The Jazz Singer would gross the most that weekend, pulling in a modest $1.167m, versus The Mirror Crack'd's $608k from 340 screens, and Inside Moves's $201k from 67 screens.   But compared to Clint Eastwood's Any Which Way You Can, the Richard Pryor/Gene Wilder comedy Stir Crazy, and Dolly Parton/Lily Tomlin/Jane Fonda comedy 9 to 5, it wasn't the best opening they could hope for.   But the film would continue to play… well, if not exceptional, at least it would hold on to its intended audience for a while. Sensing the film needed some help, Capitol Records released a second single from the soundtrack, another power ballad called Hello Again, in January 1981, which would become yet another top ten hit for Diamond. A third single, the pro-immigration power-pop song America, would arrive in April 1981 and go to number eight on the charts, but by then, the film was out of theatres with a respectable $27.12m in tickets sold.   Contemporary reviews of the film were rather negative, especially towards Diamond as an actor. Roger Ebert noted in his review that there were so many things wrong in the film that the review was threatening to become a list of cinematic atrocities. His review buddy Gene Siskel did praise Lucie Arnaz's performance, while pointing out how out of touch the new story was with the immigrant story told by the original film. Many critics would also point out the cringe-worthy homage to the original film, where Diamond unnecessarily performs in blackface, as well as Olivier's overacting.   I recently watched the film for the first time since 1981, and it's not a great movie by any measurable metric. Diamond isn't as bad an actor as the reviews make him out to be, especially considering he's essentially playing an altered version of himself, a successful pop singer, and Lucie Arnaz is fairly good. The single best performance in the film comes from Caitlin Adams, playing Jess's wife Rivka, who, for me, is the emotional center of the film. And yes, Olivier really goes all-in on the scenery chewing. At times, it's truly painful to watch this great actor spin out of control.   There would be a few awards nominations for the film, including acting nominations for Diamond and Arnaz at the 1981 Golden Globes, and a Grammy nomination for Best Soundtrack Album, but most of its quote unquote awards would come from the atrocious Golden Raspberry organization, which would name Diamond the Worst Actor of the year and Olivier the Worst Supporting Actor during its first quote unquote ceremony, which was held in some guy's living room.   Ironically but not so surprisingly, while the film would be vaguely profitable for its producers, it would be the soundtrack to the movie that would bring in the lion's share of the profits. On top of three hit singles, the soundtrack album would sell more than five million copies just in the United States in 1980 and 1981, and would also go platinum in Canada, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. While he would earn less than half a million dollars from the film, Diamond's cut of the soundtrack would net him a dollar per unit sold, earning him more than ten times his salary as an actor.   And although I fancied myself a punk and new wave kid at the end of 1980, I bought the soundtrack to The Jazz Singer, ostensibly as a gift for my mom, who loved Neil Diamond, but I easily wore out the grooves of the album listening to it over and over again. Of the ten new songs he wrote for the soundtrack, there's a good two or three additional tracks that weren't released as singles, including a short little ragtime-inspired ditty called On the Robert E. Lee, but America is the one song from the soundtrack I am still drawn to today. It's a weirdly uplifting song with its rhythmic “today” chants that end the song that just makes me feel good despite its inherent cheesiness.   After The Jazz Singer, Neil Diamond would only appear as himself in a film. Lucie Arnaz would never quite have much of a career after the film, although she would work quote regularly in television during the 80s and 90s, including a short stint as the star of The Lucie Arnaz Show, which lasted six episodes in 1985 before being cancelled. Laurence Olivier would continue to play supporting roles in a series of not so great motion pictures and television movies and miniseries for several more years, until his passing in 1989. And director Richard Fleischer would make several bad movies, including Red Sonja and Million Dollar Mystery, until he retired from filmmaking in 1987.   As we noted in our February 2020 episode about AFD, the act of releasing three movies on the same day was a last, desperate move in order to pump some much needed capital into the company. And while The Jazz Singer would bring some money in, that wasn't enough to cover the losses from the other two movies released the same day, or several other underperforming films released earlier in the year such as the infamous Village People movie Can't Stop the Music and Raise the Titanic. Sir Lew Grade would close AFD down in early 1981, and sell several movies that were completed, in production or in pre-production to Universal Studios. Ironically, those movies might have saved the company had they been able to hang on a little longer, as they included such films as The Dark Crystal, Frances, On Golden Pond, Sophie's Choice and Tender Mercies.   Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again soon, when Episode 99 is released.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about Neil Diamond and The Jazz Singer.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.

Theater Royal, originally broadcast December 24, 1953, 69 years ago, A Christmas Carol starring Sir Laurence Olivier. The classic Dickens story about Scrooge and Bob Cratchet. And Tiny Tim, of course. Also Guest Star, originally broadcast December 16, 1951, Stand-in for Santa starring Macdonald Carey. Visit my web page - http://www.classicradio.streamWe receive no revenue from YouTube. If you enjoy our shows, listen via the links on our web page or if you're so inclined, Buy me a coffee! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/wyattcoxelAHeard on almost 100 radio stations from coast to coast. Classic Radio Theater features great radio programs that warmed the hearts of millions for the better part of the 20th century. Host Wyatt Cox brings the best of radio classics back to life with both the passion of a long-time (as in more than half a century) fan and the heart of a forty-year newsman. But more than just “playing the hits”, Wyatt supplements the first hour of each day's show with historical information on the day and date in history including audio that takes you back to World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. FDR, Eisenhower, JFK, Reagan, Carter, Nixon, LBJ. It's a true slice of life from not just radio's past, but America's past.Wyatt produces 21 hours a week of freshly minted Classic Radio Theater presentations each week, and each day's broadcast is timely and entertaining!

What you'll learn in this episode:   How Beatriz discovered and catalogued the 2,600 rings in the Alice and Louis Koch Ring Collection at the Swiss National Museum How Covid lockdown changed how people wear jewelry Beatriz's tricks for making a jewelry exhibit more engaging What it's like to work with jewels uncovered from shipwrecks How global trade has influenced how jewelry is designed and made   About Beatriz Chadour-Sampson   Beatriz Chadour-Sampson studied art history, classical archaeology and Italian philology at the University of East Anglia, and at the University of Münster, Germany. Her doctoral thesis was on the Italian Renaissance goldsmith Antonio Gentili da Faenza. In 1985 she published the jewelry collection of the Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Cologne. Since 1988 she has worked freelance as a jewelry historian, curator of exhibitions and academic writer in Britain. Her numerous publications on jewelry, ranging from antiquity to the present day, include the The Gold Treasure from the Nuestra Señora de la Concepción (1991), and 2000 Finger Rings from the Alice and Louis Koch Collection, Switzerland (1994). She was the consultant curator in the re-designing of the William and Judith Bollinger Jewelry Gallery at the Victoria & Albert Museum (opened in 2008), London and was guest curator of the ‘Pearl' exhibition (2013-14). She is an Associate Member of the Goldsmiths' Company, London. Today Beatriz Chadour-Sampson works as a freelance international and jewelry historian and scholarly author. Her extensive publications range from Antiquity to the present day.    Additional Resources: Instagram Museum Jewellery Curators - Goldsmiths' Fair Inside the Jewel Vault with Dr Beatriz Chadour-Sampson Photos available on TheJeweleryJourney.com Transcript:   Working in jewelry sometimes means being a detective. As a freelance jewelry historian and curator of the Alice and Louis Koch Ring Collection at the Swiss National Museum, Beatriz Chadour-Sampson draws on her wealth of knowledge to find jewelry clues—even when a piece has no hallmark or known designer. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how she creates jewelry exhibits that engage viewers; how she found her way into the niche of shipwreck jewelry; and what it was like to catalogue 2,600 rings. Read the episode transcript here.    Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it's released later this week. My guest today is Beatriz Chadour-Sampson. She's been the curator of the Alice and Louis Koch Ring Collection at the Swiss National Museum for almost 35 years. She's also a jewelry historian, art historian, educator, author and a whole bunch of other things I'm sure I'm missing out on, but she'll fill us in today. Beatriz, welcome to the program.   Beatriz: Thank you very much for your invitation.   Sharon: Can you tell us about your jewelry journey? It's been quite a journey.   Beatriz: Yes, the journey starts many years ago when I was a small child, in fact. I'm not a young chick at the moment, but I started off in my childhood with jewelry. I have to tell you a little bit of the family history. I was born in Cuba. My father was Russian and my mother was British. There's a whole story of European history, including being five times refugees from Europe within Europe. That's the aside, but my father learned how to cut and polish diamonds during the war in Cuba. After the war, he opened an import/export business for gemstones. It's not unknown. You'll probably find on the internet a picture of me, age three, sorting stones in his office in Cuba. We left Cuba during the Cuban Revolution. I was a Cuban subject as well as my father, but we left and never returned.    He opened a business called Chadour Charms, Inc. in New York. I always spent my holidays in New York. My mother was working in a company where I couldn't tag along. I spent most of my free time as a child on 47th Street, which was called the gold and diamond alley at the time. My father designed charms. He had the gold cast and then set the stones himself. On 47th Street we had many friends we visited. One had a refinery for gold and silver; the other one sold supplies for goldsmiths, which was quite exciting. I encountered pearls, corals, diamonds and all sorts of jewelry experiences.    That was from three years to early childhood. It was about three years altogether in New York. Then my father was offered a job in Frankfurt am Main in Germany. He spoke fluent German. It was an American company building a pearl business in Frankfurt. That's when I got even deeper into jewelry. Of course, there was also the trade. You can call it child labor today. In those days maybe it was seen slightly differently, but I did my homework with the secretaries. After that, I was stringing pearls, writing invoices and doing all kinds of things with pearls. When I was slightly older, I was allowed to make pearl pairs. Don't think that a pearl is white. It's nowhere near white. There are so many different colors and lusters that come in the pearl. So, I was setting pearls, hundreds of pearls, sorting them by a quarter of a millimeter, and then pairing them for earrings and matching the pearls in their luster so they could be worn as earrings.   From there we went on to jewelry, so stones and charms. Something interesting with the charms—I have a little anecdote. I was researching a book, “The Power of Love,” which came out in 2019, and I was looking in an auction catalogue for a famous love ring that Sir Laurence Olivier gave to the actress Vivian Leigh. Late at night, as I do very often, I was searching on the internet for the auction catalogue, and suddenly I see a charm bracelet. I couldn't believe my eyes. One of the charms she had on the bracelet was designed by my father. I can prove that because I have the same charm on my charm bracelet. It was a ship in the sunset, as you see in the background. So, that was going down memory lane.    When I reached the age of 18, I said, “I don't want to have anything to do with jewelry ever again.” I had enough. I grew up in the jewelry trade. It was all trade. Lo and behold, I then decided to study art history in Germany and England, but I did my thesis in Germany at the University of Münster. My subject at the end of this was Antonio Gentili, a Renaissance goldsmith. He came from Faenza. He worked for the Medici and the Farnese families, two very high families. He also did works for the Vatican. I remember in my early years after my dissertation, I used to see the Easter Mass on television in Germany. I was looking to see if the cross and candlesticks I worked on were on the show on the altar, which most years they were.    I then got into goldsmiths' work. It's through my jewelry background and my thesis on Renaissance goldsmiths' work that I was awarded a scholarship to write the catalogue of 900 pieces of jewelry for what is now called the Museum for Applied Arts, the Museum für Angewandte Kunst. The collection covers 5,000 years of jewelry history. I was really plunged into the deep history of jewelry. There weren't so many books at the time. They were more archaeology books. This explosion of jewelry books is something that came after I had finished the catalogue. There was a lot of research that was quite complex, but I enjoyed it. It was wonderful to gain that experience and knowledge of a wide part of jewelry history. That was in 1981. I finished the catalogue. It was published. That was also my first experience doing an exhibition because when the catalogue was launched, we had an exhibition with the jewelry. More recently I've been with the Cologne Museum since 1981. It was the first time. They're now doing a new display of the jewelry. They're still planning it. I think it's due to come out next year, so there will be a new display of the jewelry I catalogued.    Then I was offered a job in Hanau, Germany. Many will not realize that Hanau has a history in jewelry that goes back to the 17th century. Up to the First World War, it was a center for producing hand-manufactured jewelry. Today, they have an academy where you can learn how to make jewelry. That goes back to 1772. So, it's a city of great tradition of jewelry. I was Managing Director of the Gesellschaft für Goldschmiedekunst. I was organizing exhibitions and competitions and catalogues, and it was all contemporary jewelry.  When I was working in Cologne, that was my first encounter with contemporary jewelry. I met people who I became great friends with. I also took part in the many events of the Forum für Schmuck und Design, which still exists. So, those were my early experiences with contemporary jewelry, but when I got to Hanau, I was plunged right into it. I had all kinds of jobs to do, as I said, exhibitions, catalogues and competitions.    I stayed there for about three and a half years. In 1988, I was asked if I would catalogue the Alice and Louis Koch Collection. Louis Koch was a very famous jeweler in Frankfurt au Main, Germany, and he and his wife collected rings, among many other collections. It was a family of collections. By 1904, they had about 1,700 rings. There are over 2,600 rings now. I was asked to catalogue the 1,700 rings, which took me quite a long time, but I was doing all kinds of other projects in between. The collector allowed me to do that, which was great fun. In 1994, the historical collection was catalogued fully. It's like an encyclopedia of rings from ancient Egypt on. It covers 4,000 years of jewelry history.   In about 1993, just before we finished the catalogue—and there are a few contemporary rings in the 1994 publication. I believe this collection from Louis Koch in 1904 went to a second and a third generation after he died in 1930. The fourth generation, we discussed it, and we came to the conclusion that they should make it their own and continue where their great-grandfather had finished. Now, their great-grandfather was, as I said, a very famous family jeweler in Frankfurt. The shop was called the Cartier of Germany, so you can imagine royalty wearing it and the national business. He was a quite a jeweler. They also expanded to Baden-Baden. He was a very fashionable jeweler, and he was a contemporary of René Lalique. He didn't buy rings from any other contemporaries, but he bought a ring by René Lalique, so he must have realized there was something very contemporary about Lalique. He was the modernizer of French jewelry at the time, using glass and gold that was unthinkable.    So, we went on this venture from 1993 until the publication in 2019. We amassed a collection of 610 rings from the 20th and 21st century, which are all catalogued. Then the collection went into the Swiss National Museum. There was a small exhibition, but since 2019, there's a permanent display of 1,700 rings. May I add that the 610 contemporary rings are all on display, so we reduced repetitions within the historical part of the collection. Interestingly, this room's showcase is also round like a ring. With 1,700 rings, it's not an easy task because you have to go in a circle. We had big, brown panels of paper and played around with the rings. It starts with themes and then goes on chronologically to the contemporary. You couldn't make a mistake because once you got to ring 200, you couldn't go back to number 50. You can imagine going up to 1,700. I can say there are two rings that are not in the right place, but that's not too bad with 1,700 rings.   Sharon: Did you have to photograph them?   Beatriz: I'm very lucky to finish up on the Koch Collection. I'm now consultant curator to the Swiss National Museum in Zurich. I was responsible for the display there together with my colleagues in the museum. That was quite an experience. It's wonderful after 35 years to still be able to do this. I think they were a bit concerned about my babies and that I would want to run away from it, but that isn't the case. I really enjoy working with them. It's a pleasure. It's so rewarding, after 35 years, to see the collection on display, which was always in private hands from the 1900s onward.   I've just written six blogs for the Swiss National Museum. One is on the Napoleonic Wars, and the stories are all told by the rings. The next one coming out in November is on Josiah Wedgwood and his sculptor, John Flaxman. Rings tell lots of stories.   Sharon: Are the blogs in English?    Beatriz: Everything in the Swiss National Museum is English, German, French and Italian. So, you take your pick which one you want.   Sharon: Did you have to photograph everything? When you say you catalogued them, I think of a catalogue being a photograph and description.   Beatriz: Oh, no. The photographs of the historical collection were all done by a photographer. It's very difficult because we had to choose one background for all. That was complex. It's pre-1994, so it's sort of an old, pale, gray blue. One color fits all because it was the encyclopedic nature of the books.    With the 2019 book, I was working with the photographer in Zurich. I spent many weeks and months in Zurich sitting next to the photographer and choosing which angle because contemporary rings don't just have a hoop and a bezel. It's a piece of sculpture, so you have to know exactly which angle to take the photograph to show as much as you can of the ring. I was actually working together with the photographer. You learn a lot with such jobs.    Sharon: Wow! Today there are all kinds of degrees you can get with exhibitions. Was it something you learned hands on or learned by doing?   Beatriz: I was working at the practice in my second home of the Victoria and Albert Museum, because I was consultant curator to the William and Judith Bollinger Jewelry Gallery. I worked there for four and a half years on the displays. When you see the displays in the gallery, the concept was from me. I had little black and white photographs of the old gallery, nothing in color. It didn't matter that I knew the pieces by heart and each piece of jewelry was about the size of a small fingernail, and I got a damp hand from cutting out 4,000 images of 4,000 pieces of jewelry, very high-tech, of course. I had my pieces of paper, and I started thinking that every board has to tell a story. For me with an exhibition, the exhibit has to tell the story, and the text below on the captions really helps you understand it. Visually, I think it's very important that the pieces also talk. So, yes, I started before the architect was allocated and we worked together with 4,000 pieces. My colleague, Richard H. Cumber, worked on the watches, but otherwise all the jewelry is designed on black and white photographs on white sheets of paper with double-sided tape.   Sharon: Do you have thoughts about why you got so immersed in jewelry? You said you didn't want anything to do with jewelry, but here you are immersed in it. What were your thoughts?   Beatriz: You mean deep diving in it?   Sharon: Yes.   Beatriz: I grew up in the jewelry trade and experienced the Cuban Revolution and hardships, being refugees in New York and so on and then moving again to another country. It was complex. As a child, it wasn't quite easy. It didn't do me any harm. I've survived, but it was a really hard trade. What I was doing later, and still do now, is historical jewelry. It's a very different thing. I think I've gotten my love of jewelry back, yes, but I'm very keen on the wide picture of jewelry covering thousands of years.    In fact, I've been doing courses for the Victoria and Albert Museum since 2008. When I do the “Bedazzled” one, which is a history of jewelry, I start with 150,000 B.C. I jump off it pretty quickly, but for me, it's so important for people to go back to that time to understand what jewelry was about. To me, it was certainly more amuletic rather than status. It was status as well probably. We can't follow that, but certainly I think amuletic to protect from the dangers. They lived in a very natural world, so the dangers were much worse than we could imagine. I think it's fascinating to see what was in other periods of jewelry history. It makes it much more exciting to understand what's happening now.   Sharon: When you came to contemporary jewelry—it seems that you're pretty immersed in that also—what stood out to you? What made a piece different or jump out at you? There seems to be so much copycatting in many ways.   Beatriz: Definitely, a lot of copycatting. I've worked on a collection of 450 pieces of, and I can tell you that's one of the most copied ones. On Instagram, I have to be careful that I don't get nasty remarks because I do point out, “Yes, we've seen that before. He was ahead of his time, but his style is still modern today.” When we were putting the Koch Collection together with the 610 rings, 20 from the 21st century, the individual l idea was very important for me. It has to be innovative; the idea has to be new; it has to be interesting. For the materials, it should be an experiment with new materials; different materials; materials you wouldn't use for jewelry. We talk about sustainable jewelry. Pre-1994 we have two rings in the collection made of washing-up bottles. We were way ahead of the times. Of course, Peter Chang used recycled materials, and we commissioned a ring from him. We did commission people that never made rings before just to put them to the test. It was very interesting.   Sharon: I didn't know that Peter Chang was recycled.   Beatriz: The materials are all recycled materials, yes. That is the amazing part, the recycled materials. These two crazy rings we bought from a German jeweler, it's just washing-up bottles. If you're creative and imaginative, you make something interesting.    We have many important names who made rings. We have some wonderful rings from Wendy Ramshaw and so on. We have a lot of big names, but that was not the point. We have a lot of ones that just graduated or were young or completely unknown. It's more the idea and what they made. Of course, I was approached many times regarding rings and I had to decline, saying, “Sorry, we already have something like that.” I couldn't say it was not exciting. The idea was already there, so it makes it difficult. Unless it was interpreted differently, yes, that's fine.    So, I think we got a lot of crazy pieces. The collector always teased me. He said, “Can you wear the ring?” I said, “Of course, could you wear the ring? What do you think?” I always choose rings for wearing. Of course, I have to admit there are a few that are not wearable. I'll admit to that, but I think with a collection like the Koch Collection, you're allowed to do that. There are few you really can't wear, or you can wear them with great difficulty.   Sharon: Yes, I think about that. I always think about how it would be to type with a ring like that, or how it would be to work at a keyboard, something like that.   Beatriz: I always say you don't wear the big, high jewelry pieces when you go shopping or washing up.   Sharon: That's true.   Beatriz: I won't say any company names, but the high jewelers of New York, Paris, wherever, they make those pieces. Those are rings. If they look great, they're wearable, but you wouldn't wear them every day while you're washing up or shopping or doing other tasks around the house.   Sharon: That's true. That's probably why people don't buy them as much anymore. They don't have places to go, Covid aside.   Beatriz: I think with Covid, the interesting thing is that we have rings that are sculptures. If you're doing a collection and somebody makes a ring sculpture, I think it's valid to be in the Koch Collection. We do have a few ring sculptures, including Marjorie Schick. But it's interesting that you mentioned Covid and when the pandemic was on. I don't want to go into the pandemic, but we have a much-increased Zoom culture. It did exist before the pandemic, people trying to reduce travelling and climate change and so on. It did come before the pandemic, but it is definitely an increased media. You can't really wear a ring and say, “Well, here's my ring.” You have to wear something that's in the Zoom zone. That's earrings and brooches. Fortunately, I'm somebody who likes earrings and brooches. I always have on earrings and brooches.   Sharon: What you have on is very Zoom culture. It shows up well.   Beatriz: The color shows up, yes. The earrings, they're made of silver and made by Eve Balashova, who works in Glasgow. Zoom is not a problem with this jewelry because, as I said, I love the earrings and certainly the brooch that goes with it. In fact, when I bought the earrings I asked, “Can you make a brooch I can wear with it?”    Sharon: Wow! When you go out, do you see rings that make you say, “That should be in the collection”? Can you add new ones?   Beatriz: Since the display in 2019, there are only a few additions. It sort of finished with the publication and the display, but there have been the odd new rings. I write a lot about that. We have had a few, and I'm hoping that next year they will be on display. Maybe half a dozen rings; not many. We might have another exciting one, but we have to wait. Until the collector has actually gotten his hands on it, I don't want to jinx things.    Sharon: But you identify them and then they say yea or nay.   Beatriz: Yes. They have bought things on their own as well, but we've done this together, yes. I've identified and advised. For me, it was wonderful. First of all, they don't know the collector. It's always the Koch Collection, but the family's name is different, so it was always very modest, without great names. I was the one who negotiated everything, and it always gave me great pleasure when I could stand up and say, “We've chosen a ring for the collection.” You find this great joy on the other end, especially for those young or unknown ones. You could imagine what it meant for them. It's always great joy.    I love working with contemporary artist jewelers. I worked for 13 years as a visiting tutor under David Watkins. I always said I learned more from them than they learned from me, but I helped them with their Ph.Ds. I really enjoyed working with them, and it continued with being able to buy or acquire what they made for the collection.   Sharon: You do a lot of teaching. You're teaching other classes in January at the V&A.   Beatriz: Yeah.   Sharon: It started online.   Beatriz: Yes. In 2021, I did an online course, “Bedazzled.” Next year, in January and February, it's called “Jewels of Love, Romance and Eternity,” which is a topic I've worked on because I published the book “Proud Love.” We have a few other speakers who can bring another slant into it. Again, I start with antiquity, because you can't talk about love jewels without actually talking about Roman jewelry. Many people don't realize that the engagement ring or the proposal ring or marriage ring started with the ancient Romans.   Sharon: I didn't know that.   Beatriz: Diamonds in engagement rings started in the 15th century. It might be a little bit earlier, but that's more or less the dateline. So, there are lots of interesting things to talk about.    As I said, I've been doing courses since 2008 at regular intervals. Also at the Victoria and Albert Museum, I was co-curator of the pearls exhibition. I did a lot of courses on pearls as well, and that is a fascinating topic. It was wonderful to work on that exhibition. It was together with the Qatar Museum's authority, but I was asked by the Victoria and Albert Museum to create an exhibition for the British public, which was very different to what they had in mind, of course.   Sharon: There are so many new kinds of pearls, or at least kinds that weren't popular before. Tahitians and yellow pearls, that sort of thing.   Beatriz: Yes, all these extra pearls are the cultured pearls. It's a history of the natural pearl. Qatar was a center where they were diving for pearls, so we did all the diving history, how merchants worked in that area in Bali and Qatar. The cultured pearl is, of course, Mikimoto. There are theories that the Chinese started the cultured pearls, but the one who really got the cultured pearls going was Mikimoto. He certainly did the science with it. He worked together with scientists and had the vision. Natural pearls were very, very expensive, and his philosophy was that every woman should wear a pearl necklace or be able to afford a pearl necklace. I think his task is fulfilled.   It's interesting because the natural pearl doesn't have quite the luster of the cultured pearl. By the 20s, you have the cultured pearls coming in, and then by the 50s—when I did the exhibition, we had so many stories being told. Of course, some ladies from the Middle East are probably kicking themselves because they sold the family natural pearls because they didn't have the luster, and they bought the nice cultured pearls that are more flashy. Of course, now the value of natural pearls is unthinkable.   Sharon: Was there a catalogue?    Beatriz: With cultured pearls, you have the golden pearls and the Tahitian pearls and so on, but the color of the pearls depends on the shell they grow in, unless you have some that have been tampered with and are colored. But there are Tahitian pearls, golden pearls and all these different shades. Melo pearls have an orangey color. The color of the pearl is dependent on the shell it grows in. The rarest pearl is the pink pearl that comes from the Caribbean. That's the conch pearl; that's hugely expensive. You asked about the catalogue.   Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.

Christmas is just around the corner which means this podcast is the last for the Christmas Season. For our final Christmas show we present Theatre Royal's A Christmas Carol Starring Sir Laurence Olivier. A Christmas Carol aired on Dec.24,1953. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!!!!!! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/michael-perry6/support

It's 1948, and our movies are catnip for theatre kids. First up, Sir Laurence Olivier takes on what's clearly a dream project in Hamlet, and while the Oscars favoured him, Hamlet enthusiasts Claire and Erin have some notes while Dan explains which contemporary horror franchise it slots right into. Next up, The Red Shoes talks passion, obsession, and ballet, and your hosts are passionately obsessed with the results. It's everything a theatre kid could want, in theory, and we're here to dissect it for you.Find all of our episodes and the rest of Writing Therapy Productions' various entertainments at www.writingtherapyproductions.com

Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. (born December 28, 1954) is an American actor, director, and producer. Known for his performances on the screen and stage, he has been described as an actor who reconfigured "the concept of classic movie stardom". He is also known for his frequent collaborations with directors Spike Lee, Antoine Fuqua, and Tony Scott. Throughout his career spanning over four decades, Washington has received numerous accolades, including a Tony Award, two Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards and two Silver Bears. In 2016, he received the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2020, The New York Times named him the greatest actor of the 21st century.Washington started his acting career in theatre, acting in performances off-Broadway, including William Shakespeare's Coriolanus in 1979. He first came to prominence in the medical drama St. Elsewhere (1982–1988). Washington's early film roles included Norman Jewison's A Soldier's Story (1984) and Richard Attenborough's Cry Freedom (1987). For his role as Private Silas Trip in the Civil War drama Glory (1989), he won his first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Throughout the 1990s, he established himself as a leading man in such varied films as Spike Lee's biographical film epic Malcolm X (1992), Kenneth Branagh's Shakespeare adaptation Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Alan J. Pakula's legal thriller The Pelican Brief (1993), Jonathan Demme's drama Philadelphia (1993), and Norman Jewison's legal drama The Hurricane (1999). Washington won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as corrupt detective Alonzo Harris in the crime thriller Training Day (2001). Washington has continued acting in diverse roles, such as football coach Herman Boone in Remember the Titans (2000), poet and educator Melvin B. Tolson in The Great Debaters (2007), drug kingpin Frank Lucas in American Gangster (2007) and an airline pilot with an addiction in Flight (2012).He won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his role in the Broadway revival of the August Wilson play Fences in 2010. Washington later directed, produced, and starred in the film adaptation in 2016, which was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Washington. He also produced the film adaptation of Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020). His stage credits include appearances in Broadway revivals of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun in 2014, and Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh in 2018. Washington is one of only five male actors to be nominated for an Academy Award in five different decades, alongside Sir Laurence Olivier, Paul Newman, Sir Michael Caine, and Jack Nicholson.

Known best for playing Gareth in Four Weddings and a Funeral, Simon Callow is a critically acclaimed actor, writer and director. Raised by a host of eccentric and strong-minded women, he eventually found his feet at the National Theatre at the Old Vic under the tenure of Sir Laurence Olivier - much to his mother's displeasure. Tickets for his latest show, the award-winning musical, Anything Goes, are available at anythinggoesmusical.co.uk (June 2022 - September 2022).

For Video Editon, Please Click and Subscribe Here: https://youtu.be/OKnJSAuc1z4   Lucie Arnaz began her long career in a recurring role on the television program “The Lucy Show.” At fifteen, she became a series regular on “Here's Lucy,” and she later starred in her own series “The Lucie Arnaz Show.” On film, Lucie has co-starred in The Jazz Singer with Neil Diamond and Sir Laurence Olivier, as well as starring in several made for television movies including Who Killed The Black Dahlia and Down to You. On the stage, Lucie created the role of Kathy in the West Coast Premiere of Vanities at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles before starring as Gittel Mosca in the first national company of Seesaw alongside Tommy Tune. Lucie's Broadway credits include They're Playing Our Song, Lost in Yonkers, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Pippin. Arnaz and her husband of thirty-eight years, actor/writer Laurence Luckinbill, teamed up to form ArLuck Entertainment, a film and television production company, and together produced the documentary Lucy & Desi: A Home Movie, which was honored with an Emmy. During her distinguished career, Lucie has received numerous accolades including a Golden Globe nomination, a Theatre World Award, and Chicago's famed Sarah Siddons award.  

Harvey Brownstone conducts an in-depth interview with Legendary Actor, Producer and Author, Robert Wagner About Harvey's guest: Robert Wagner is one of the most popular and successful stars in the entertainment industry, boasting three hit television series and an impressive list of both feature and television films.  He has acted in over 100 films and made hundreds of television appearances in his 70+ year career.   As a young man under contract to 20th Century Fox, Robert Wagner was cast by Darryl F. Zanuck in With a Song in My Heart. Although the part lasted a scant minute, his performance as a crippled soldier responding to the song of Susan Hayward's Jane Froman brought immediate public reaction to the studio. Spencer Tracy saw his performance in Beneath the Twelve Mile Reef and requested Wagner for the role of his son in Broken Lance. Tracy was so impressed with Wagner, he cast him again as his brother in The Mountain. A small sample of Wagner's numerous film credits includes Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, The Pink Panther, The Curse of the Pink Panther, Midway, The Towering Inferno, Banning, Harper, Prince Valiant, The True Story of Jesse James, and All the Fine Young Cannibals. He starred with Joanne Woodward in her film debut, A Kiss Before Dying.  Antonio Banderas directed Wagner in Crazy in Alabama.  In the 1990s, he was introduced to a new legion of fans with the role of Number Two, the villainous henchman to Dr. Evil, the archenemy of Mike Myers' title character in the Austin Powers trilogy.  On television, Wagner starred in three long-running series.  He was nominated for an Emmy for his role as suave cat-burglar Alexander Mundy in It Takes a Thief with Malachi Throne and Fred Astaire.  He portrayed con man-turned-detective Pete Ryan in Switch with Eddie Albert and Sharon Gless.  And Wagner became a fan favorite as the debonair and charming millionaire/amateur detective Jonathan Hart in Hart to Hart with Stefanie Powers. Other illustrious television performances include starring with Jaclyn Smith in the top-rated miniseries, Windmills of the Gods — based on Sidney Sheldon's best-selling novel; Angie Dickinson in the miniseries Pearl; Audrey Hepburn in Love Among Thieves; Lesley Anne Down in Indiscreet; and Elizabeth Taylor in There Must Be a Pony, which he also executive-produced. He appeared alongside such notable names as Philip Casnoff, Kyle Chandler, Cathy Lee Crosby, Leslie-Ann Down, and Billy Dee Williams in North and South: Book 3, Heaven and Hell.  Sir Laurence Olivier chose Wagner to star with him in the television adaptation of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  Wagner's wife, the late Natalie Wood, co-starred with them. In addition to his film and television ventures, Robert toured the world performing in A.R. Gurney's Love Letters with Stefanie Powers.  They were the first to launch the tour internationally. After his tour with Powers ended, Wagner enjoyed the play so much, he continued performing it at charity events and around the world with his wife, actress Jill St. John. Away from the acting world, Robert Wagner has long been a fan of golf and boasted a five handicap. He once beat professional golfer  Sam Snead in a head-to-head competition.  Footage of this win is posted in the Video section of this page under Additional Videos.  For more interviews and podcasts go to: https://www.harveybrownstoneinterviews.com/https://www.robert-wagner.com/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/277363364879/ https://www.instagram.com/robertwagnerofficial/#RobertWagner    #harveybrownstoneinterviews

On the Bard's Birthday, Nick Hennegan presents a tapestry of Shakespeare happenings, from famous speeches by John Gielgud and Sir Laurence Olivier, to modern music from the 'Shakespeare In Love' movie and Hennegan's own 'Hamlet - Horatio's Tale', by Robb Williams. On Resonance 104.4fm and BohemianBritain.com  

On the Bard's Birthday, Nick Hennegan presents a tapestry of Shakespeare happenings, from famous speeches by John Gielgud and Sir Laurence Olivier, to modern music from the 'Shakespeare In Love' movie and Hennegan's own 'Hamlet - Horatio's Tale', by Robb Williams. On Resonance 104.4fm and BohemianBritain.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/bohemianbritain/message

Quattro ciaKKini e mezzo per un adattamento insieme maestoso e essenziale, capolavoro attuale che guarda in alto cercando l'approvazione di Sir Laurence Olivier.

"You will feel the power. Live the adventure. Experience the fantastic." In this week's episode, we discuss the epic adventure movie 'Clash of the Titans' starring Harry Hamlin, Judi Bowker and Sir Laurence Olivier. This movie was directed by Desmond Davis and features the amazing stop motion special effects of Ray Harryhausen.

Episode 14 Dracula (1979) It's Mike's choice for our return episode after 2 months and we begin 2022 by discussing John Badham's late 70s version of Dracula. Will the new romantic take on the classic Count character be to the liking of our hosts? Featuring a bonus this time of Sylvester Mcoy, who had a minor role in the film answering a question our co host Mike asked him at a convention back in 2015.You'll want to hear his opinions on how the late and perhaps not so great Sir Laurence Olivier treated him on set. Contact us Twitter : @movi_night Instagram : @fridaynightmovietime You Tube : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrgxVCg-6wOL7OkcJUhtH9A --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fridaynightmovieretropod/message

Bonus Episode: Sir Laurence Olivier by Conor Hanratty

Do you feel lucky? Viv Groskop talks to actress Dame Eileen Atkins about how owning the room is sometimes about being open to chance. They explore the genuine terror of the first night, the horror of being publicly judged, and why your own opinion is what matters. And there are room-owning anecdotes aplenty, starring the likes of Sir Laurence Olivier... Dame Eileen's book, Will She Do? Act One of a Life on Stage is out now. Viv's book, Lift As You Climb is out now. @vivgroskop    

Jeffrey is joined by Gyles Brandreth – author, broadcaster, and, like Jeffrey, a former politician – to discuss which book and film he believes are ‘unputdownable'. Both Jeffrey and Gyles have chosen Shakespeare adaptions for one of their choices, which prompts plenty of anecdotes, memories of great performances and laughter. Gyles also reveals the invaluable advice he received as a schoolboy from Sir Laurence Olivier.Jeffrey's latest book, Over My Dead Body, is out now in hardback, ebook and audiobook. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Steve & Izzy continue the Year of the Character with Dractober, a celebration of the iconic character Dracula, as they discuss 1979's "Dracula" starring Frank Langella, Donald Pleasance & Sir Laurence Olivier!!! Are their racist vampires? What can I expect watching this for free on Tubi? How fast does a vampire walk? What's the proper way to assist a woman who is being hysterical or can't breathe?!? Let's find out!!! So kick back, grab a few brews, google images of babyface Frank, and enjoy!!! This episode is also brought to you by PodcArt Fest which will be coming back again on Saturday, November 27th, 2021!!! We'll be hosting a Virtual Festival celebration of Podcasters & Artists to help raise awareness and money for Artists in need during these times!!! For full details, follow us at @PodcArtFest on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram or you can also see our home page at my.boothcentral.com/v/events/podcart-fest-spooky-fall-festival Try it today!!! Twitter - www.twitter.com/eilfmovies Facebook - www.facebook.com/eilfmovies Instagram - www.instagram.com/eilfmovies Etsy - www.untidyvenus.etsy.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week the guys are saying hello again to terrible remakes with the 1980 version of THE JAZZ SINGER!   Cooper loves Neil Diamond, but will it be love on the rocks when he has to watch him act? Has Nolan finally met a montage he didn't like? And what on earth is Sir Laurence Olivier doing in this movie? (Answer: A HORRENDOUS accent) And don't forget about THAT SCENE, which is as ridiculous as it is offensive. Throw on your best sequined shirt; this episode (featuring a beer from Bicycle Craft Brewing) shows why even though diamonds may be forever, acting careers aren't.

“Is it safe?” If that question sounds eerily familiar to you spoken through a deep German accent, then you've experienced this movie before, and if not, then you're in for ONE hell of a ride!  That dialogue is spoken by the late, great Sir Laurence Olivier delivering one of his finest latter career performances and also receiving an Oscar nomination for his work.  Dustin Hoffman is the main star however as the titular character, a marathon runner/grad student who inadvertently gets involved in a nasty plot involving diamonds, torture, and former Nazi officers now walking among us….in 1976 mind you.  It also co-stars ‘70's icon Roy Scheider along with William Devane and Marthe Keller.  Directed by John Schlesinger and written by William Goldman. Let's revisit one of the more memorable conspiracy thrillers of the 1970's.WARNING: Features Audio of Anxiety-Inducing Torture SceneHost: Geoff GershonProducer: Marlene Gershonhttps://livingforthecinema.com/ #livingforthecinema #marathonman #moviereviews #dustinhoffman #sirlaurenceolivier

Eddie Ruiz was born and raised in Boyle Heights, California, near downtown Los Angeles. He quickly landed a guest-star on “That's So Raven” as Barry The Mascot during drama school. He attended C.S.U.,Fullerton where he received hi B.A. in Acting. He then quickly flew over to London, UK where he received his MFA in Acting from The Central School of Speech and Drama. Some grads from CSSD include Sir Laurence Olivier, Gael Garcia Bernal and Judy Dench. After his return, there has been a lot of love for Eddie in the industry. He made his film debut in the award winning film, “Russel Fish: The Sausage and Egg Incident” starring alongside GLEE's Chris Colfer (Kurt). Eddie was nominated for Best supporting actor in Russel. After landing several TV guest roles, he booked Michael Patrick King's NBC/WB Pilot as Juan in A Mann's World starring Don Johnson. Eddie also stars in films such as “Make A Movie Like Spike” appears alongside Jamil Walker Smith (Stargate, Hey Arnold), Malcolm Goodwin(Breakout Kings), “Ghostown” alongside Jack Guzman(Power Rangers), The Missing Link, Heavy Metal Strawberry Pickers, and Neighborhood Garden. Eddie is no stranger to the stage. He has worked with many respectable theatre companies such as Will & Company where he was Pinocchio in Pinocchio, playing Verges in Tony Plana's Much Ado About Nothing with East LA Classic, and Martinez in Ray Bradbury's The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit with the Pandemonium Theatre Company. He has received many awards and great reviews for his performances. Eddie lives in Hollywood, CA where he is now Acting and Producing with his Independent film company “Obviam Entertainment” with Eddy Martin, Luke McClure, and his wife Jean Altadel. www.obviamentertainment.com You can follow Eddie on Twitter and Instagram @TheEddieRuiz

Two of the Behind The Curtain's favorite guests, press agent Joshua Ellis and critic Peter Filichia, join Rob and Kevin to look back on their interactions with some of Broadway's most famous, infamous, and truly bizarre legends of the theatre. Peter and Josh look back on the true world of Sir Laurence Olivier, the terror of a certain Broadway diva, the kindness of Yul Brenner, and the humility of Diana Rigg. Warning: There are some naughty words in this one so you might want to make sure the kiddies are firmly tucked away before listening. Become a sponsor of Behind The Curtain and get early access to interviews, private playlists, and advance knowledge of future guests so you can ask the legends your own questions. Go to: http://bit.ly/2i7nWC4 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Emma Keith, producer of the National Theatre Live series of theatrical broadcasts, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky, talks about the latest broadcast, the National Theatre in London revival of Stephen Sondheim's 1971 musical, “Follies.” The producer of the series since 2016, she discusses what is required to put on this kind of international live broadcast, some of the technical issues involved, and how the National brings in a younger audience. The Royal National Theatre is the English equivalent of New York's Public Theatre, or perhaps Lincoln Center, supported to a great degree by the government's National Arts Council, and is in that sense a model of how government can support the arts. Founded in 1963 with Sir Laurence Olivier as its first director, the National now encompasses three theaters on its side near Waterloo Bridge in London. “Follies” airs on November 16, 2017 with encore presentations following. To find out more, National Theatre Live website The post Interview: Emma Keith, National Theatre Live: Sondheim's “Follies” appeared first on KPFA.

ROBERT WAGNER TALKS ABOUT HIS BOOK YOU MUST REMEMBER THISRobert Wagner is one of the most popular and successful stars in the entertainment industry, boasting three hit series and an impressive list of both feature and television films. As a young man under contract to 20th Century Fox, Wagner was cast by Darryl F. Zanuck in "With a Song in My Heart." Although the part lasted a scant minute, his performance as a crippled soldier responding to the song of Susan Hayward brought immediate public reaction to the studio. Spencer Tracy saw him in "Beneath the Twelve Mile Reef" and requested Wagner for the role of his son in "Broken Lance." Tracy was so impressed with Wagner, he cast him as his brother again in "The Mountain." A small sample of his numerous film credits includes "Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story," "The Pink Panther," "The Curse of the Pink Panther," "Midway," "The Towering Inferno," "Banning," "Harper," "Prince Valiant," "The True Story of Jesse James," and "All the Fine Young Cannibals." He recently re-created his role of "Number Two," the villainous henchman to Dr. Evil, the archenemy of Mike Myers' title character in "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me." Antonio Banderas also directed Wagner in "Crazy in Alabama." In 1998, the actor was in "Wild Things," starring Matt Dillon and Kevin Bacon.On television, Wagner has starred on three long-running series, "It Takes a Thief," with Fred Astaire, "Switch," with Eddie Albert and Sharon Gless and "Hart to Hart," with Stefanie Powers. He was nominated for an Emmy for his role as Alexander Mundy in "It Takes a Thief". Since the end of the regular run of the series, the actor has produced eight "Hart to Hart" movies for both NBC and cable's Family Channel. He also starred with Jaclyn Smith in the top-rated miniseries "Windmills of the Gods," based on Sidney Sheldon's best-selling novel; with Angie Dickinson in the miniseries "Pearl"; with Audrey Hepburn in "Love among Thieves"; with Lesley Anne Down in "Indiscreet" and in "North and South III," with Joanne Woodward in "A Kiss Before Dying"; and with Elizabeth Taylor in "There Must Be a Pony," which he also executive-produced. Wagner was chosen by Sir Laurence Olivier to star with him in the television adaptation of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," in which he costarred with his wife, the late Natalie Wood. Wagner also teamed up with Sir Laurence Oliver in "This Gun for Hire," Danielle Steel's "Jewels" and "To Catch a King."In addition to all his film and television ventures, Wagner has toured the world performing A.R. Gurney's "Love Letters", with Stefanie Powers, who were the first to launch the tour Internationally. Currently, Wagner performs "Love Letters" at charity events with his wife, actress Jill St. John.Wagner enjoys golfing and spending time with his 3 daughters, Katie (Television Personality), Natasha (Actress) and Courtney (Artist).The legendary actor and bestselling author of Pieces of My Heart offers a nostalgic look at Hollywood's golden age!With a career spanning more than five decades, few actors are more qualified to recount the glamorous Hollywood era of the late 1940s and early 1950s than Robert Wagner. You Must Remember This is Wagner's ode to a bygone age, to its incomparable style and how it was displayed, and to its legendary stars.Wagner revisits the houses, restaurants, and other haunts of Hollywood's elite, offering an intimate view of their lives on and off screen. He fondly recounts mythic figures simply entertaining at home among friends, away from the publicity machine and public eye that morphed into today's paparazzi culture. Wagner also discusses the business of Hollywood and its evolution from an industry once dominated by moguls to one run by agents, and examines the career arcs of his peers, carefully considering why some survived and others faded.Engaging and entertaining, You Must Remember This is a window into the splendors of an erstwhile era and an opportunity for readers to live vicariously through one its most beloved leading men.WWW.ROBERT-WAGNER.COMBILL MEDLEY – THE RIGHTEOUS BROTHERS - THE TIME OF MY LIFE Bill Medley's indelible baritone adorns some of the biggest hits of the twentieth century—"You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'," "(You're My) Soul and Inspiration," "Rock and Roll Heaven"—and is prominent on the soundtrack of an entire generation. He and his musical partner, the late inimitable Bobby Hatfield, formed the Righteous Brothers in 1963 and forever changed the sound of popular music. The term "blue-eyed soul" was born.After the Phil Spector-produced "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" hit #1 in 1964 and Bobby Hatfield's sweeping solo vocal turn on "Unchained Melody" enchanted millions, the Righteous Brothers found themselves in the thick of the musical and cultural changes sweeping the nation. They toured with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, became friends with Elvis Presley and the Beach Boys, and brought rhythm and blues to the largest cross-over audience it had reached to date.The Time of My Life is an affecting and vivid memoir of those times and beyond, an unvarnished look at Bill Medley's personal triumphs and tragedies through the filter of five decades of musical, television, motion picture, and live-performance success. Medley opens his head and his heart, sharing his thoughts and feelings about the great African-American music that inspired him, his loving yet tumultuous and complicated relationship with Bobby Hatfield, the murder of his first wife Karen and his struggle to raise their son alone, his close friendship with Elvis and its sad ending, his deep depression over losing his voice (and how he got it back), his smash duet with Jennifer Warnes on "(I've Had) the Time of My Life" for the Dirty Dancingsoundtrack, and how he learned to settle down and become a family man and enjoy a nearly thirty-year (and counting) marriage.But Medley's story isn't just about the #1 hits and the awards. It's the story of an immensely talented young guy who lived the rock star life and reached the pinnacle of fame, success, and excess, and how he was eventually able to renew his commitment to both his faith and his family.WWW.BILLMEDLEY.COM