*contains spoilers When I mention the name of actor Nick Adams (1931-68 drug overdose) to anyone and most people don’t know who I am talking about and cannot picture his face. Yet this is an iconic and troubled actor who was one of the first tv stars to get nominated for an Oscar for his…
Read more The Cult of Actor Nick Adams as The Oedipal Rebel (Part One)
*contains spoilers The movie White Cargo (1942) tells us of the hellish heat on an African rubber plantation at the turn of the 20th Century and how it can play with your mind… Unsurprisingly, it is based on a novel entitled Hell’s Playground which was indirectly borne upon a murder that resulted in what the…
*contains spoilers Director Hugo Fregonese (1908-87 heart attack) had a short career in Hollywood in the 1950s and ended up making international productions before his retirement in the 1970s. His brief Hollywood career working on cheap westerns and crime melodramas, with some epic elements, was bookended by his life in Argentina where he was born…
Read more Director Hugo Fregonese and Savage Pampas (Part One)
*contains spoilers Author Mickey Spillane (1918-2006 pancreatic cancer) called his writing “the chewing gum of American literature”. I guess he meant once you’ve chewed over it, you could throw it away. It’s disposable literature. Others perhaps wouldn’t be so kind, while others would rate Spillane’s work as better than that. I read Spillane’s first detective…
Read more The Cult of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (Part One)
*contains spoilers Diana Barrymore’s (1921-60 drug and alcohol overdose) life and career were a train wreck. As a young actress, she tried desperately to live up to a fabulous family name on both Broadway and Hollywood. She was once a little girl who had name, breeding, talent, and opportunity… all squandered. She was the step-aunt…
*contains spoilers Playwright and occasional screenwriter Arthur Miller (1915-2005 bladder cancer) was, of course, married for several years to troubled actress Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962 sleeping pill overdose). He tried to save her but she either didn’t want to, or was unable to, save herself. He wrote the classic plays Death of a Salesman and The…
Read more Marilyn’s Ghost in Arthur Miller’s The Misfits and Everybody Wins (Part One)
*contains spoilers Name: Hope Age: 95 Occupation: Retired Nurse Favorite Movie: Gone With the Wind (1939) Starring: Vivian Leigh, Clark Gable, Leslie Howard and Olivia de Havilland First Saw It: First saw it by herself when it first came out at the movies at Bondi Junction in Sydney Plot: Epic soap opera about the American…
Cult Film Alley 