Movies and much, much more
Oct. 13 is a birthday of the great French (born in Italy) singer and actor Yves Montand, whose biggest career was on stage as one of the greatest crooners in French chanson, yet he carved himself a name in the movie history as well. The movie, which made Montand a star, was
The Houseboat is a very romantic, light-hearted movie. It is a little gem with Cary Grant playing his usual role of a debonaire bachelor with a little twist – this time he’s a widower, a single father of three young children who suddenly decides that the children have to live with him. Suffice it to say that he’s had very little previous experience raising his kids – and it shows!
Another improbable twist – enter the rebellious daughter of an Italian music conductor as a nanny (a very young and very exotic Sophia Loren) – and the fun begins.
Oct.10 is a birthday for:
Helen Hayes, a star of the 1932 movie adaptation of the famous novel of Ermest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms. Her co-star in the movie was young Gary Cooper. Helen Hayes went on to enjoy a very successful career in the theater and in Hollywood, which spanned 70 years and brought her a full collection of all awards in the entertainment world.
Charles Dance, the British actor well-known mostly for his theatrical Shakespearean roles, who also had made several movies from his 1981 film debut with a small role in For Your Eyes Only, though I remember him much better from his role of a sinister one-eyed killer in a 1993 Hollywood parody Last Action Hero.
Guiseppe Verdi – a great Italian composer, born in 1813, whose wonderful operas
Oct. 9 is relatively uneventful – a couple of birthdays, including:
Scott Bakula, the TV actor most famous for his TV series Quantum Leap and Star Trek: Enterprise (though I’ve liked him a lot in a movie The Lord of Illusions – quite a chilling thriller/horror movie)
Tony Shalhoub, most notable in his role of Jeebs, the alien who can grow his head again and again the MIB I and II, as well a few other ones, where he did not catch my attention as much as in these two. I hear he’s big on TV right now, the series called The Monk – never seen it myself
One history fact caught my attention – in the year 1000 on Oct.9 the viking Leif Ericsson discovers Vinland, therefore discovering North America (which was almost 500 years later successfully re-discovered by Christopher Columbus). This event was not portrayed in the movies that much, but it was an inspiration for an absolutely wonderful
Oct 8 is a good day for the cinema lovers – it s a birthday of
Sigourney Weaver ( remember “The Alien (s)”?), Chevy Chase and Stephanie Zimbalist. Sigourney Weaver was really more interesting to me not in the “Alien” movies, but in a couple of very good, but not very often remembered nowadays films – ” A Year of Living Dangerously” (with a very young Mel Gibson in a leading male role) and “The Copycat”, a chilling thriller where Sigourney Weaver was at her very best playing a victim of a maniac,