View from Castel Sant'Elmo.
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British postcard. Photo: Universal.

Petite brunette actress American actress Jane Wyatt (1910-2006) starred in several Hollywood films, such as Frank Capra's Lost Horizon (1937). She is best known for her role as homemaker and mother Margaret Anderson in the television comedy series Father Knows Best (1954-1960), and as Amanda Grayson, the human mother of Spock on the Science-Fiction television series Star Trek (1966-1969). Wyatt was a three-time Emmy Award winner.

Jane Waddington Wyatt was born in 1910 in Campgaw (now part of Mahwah), New Jersey, but grew up in New York. Her father, Christopher Billop Wyatt Jr. worked on Wall Street as an investor; her mother was the drama critic Euphemia Van Rensselaer Waddington. She was directly descended, on her mother's side, from the van Rensselaer family, one of the earliest Dutch families to settle in the Colonies, as early as 1638, and which at one time owned most of what is now New York City. Jane attended the fashionable Chapin School and later Barnard College. After two years of college, she left to join the apprentice school of the Berkshire Playhouse at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where she played an assortment of roles for six months. One of her first jobs on Broadway was as an understudy to Rose Hobart in a production of 'Trade Winds'. Her career move cost her her slot on the New York Social Register. Wyatt made the transition from stage to screen and was placed under contract at Universal. There she made her film debut in director James Whale's courtroom drama One More River (1934) starring Diana Wynyard. She went back and forth between Universal and Broadway. Her most famous film role was as Ronald Colman's lover in Frank Capra's Lost Horizon (1937).

During the 1940s, Jane Wyatt starred in the films None but the Lonely Heart (Clifford Odets, 1944) with Cary Grant, Gentleman's Agreement (Elia Kazan, 1947) with Gregory Peck, and the Film Noir Boomerang! (Elia Kazan, 1947) with Dana Andrews). She also starred in the Film Noirs Pitfall (André De Toth, 1948) with Dick Powell and House by the River (Fritz Lang, 1950) with Louis Hayward. Her film career suffered due to her outspoken opposition to Senator Joseph McCarthy, the chief figure in the anti-Communist investigations of that era. She was temporarily derailed for having assisted in hosting a performance by the Bolshoi Ballet during the Second World War, though it was at the request of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Wyatt returned to her roots on the New York stage for a time and appeared in such plays as Lillian Hellman's 'The Autumn Garden', opposite Fredric March. Many people remember her best for her role as Margaret Anderson, the mother in the TV comedy series Father Knows Best (1954-1960), with Robert Young as her husband. The classic sitcom chronicled the life and times of the Anderson family in the Midwestern town of Springfield. Wyatt won three consecutive Emmy Awards for her portrayal of Margaret Anderson. She played Spock's mother in a 1967 episode of the original Star Trek series. 20 years later, she appeared in a feature film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (Leonard Nimoy, 1986). In between, she remained in the public eye as a fixture of such made-for-television features as You'll Never See Me Again (Jeannot Szwarc, 1973) and Amelia Earhart (George Schaefer, 1976). Jane Wyatt died in 2006 at home, in Bel-Air, California. She was 96 years old. Her funeral was at the Church of St Martin of Tours in Brentwood, California. She married investment broker Edgar Bethune Ward in 1935 and they remained together till his death in 2000. They had two sons, Christopher and Michael Ward. With her husband, she was interred in the San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Mission Hills, CA.

Sources: Tom Weaver (IMDb), AllMovie, Wikipedia (Dutch and English) and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Tags:   Jane Wyatt Jane Wyatt American Actress Hollywood Movie Star Television Film Cinema Kino Cine Picture Screen Movie Movies Glamour Allure Star Vintage Postcard Universal

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Vintage postcard.

American actress Jane Fonda (1937) is a two-time Academy Award winner for the crime thriller Klute (1971) and the Vietnam drama Coming Home (1978). Roger Vadim's psychedelic Science Fiction spoof Barbarella (1968) made her one of the icons of the European cinema of the 1960s. In 2014, she received the American Film Institute AFI Life Achievement Award.

Jane Fonda was born Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda in New York in 1937. She was the daughter of actor Henry Fonda and the Canadian-born socialite Frances Ford Brokaw, née Seymour. She has a brother, actor Peter Fonda, and a maternal half-sister, Frances. Her mother committed suicide when Jane was 12. The suicide was kept from her as a teenager, and she was told that her mother had died of heart failure. Fonda learned the truth months later while leafing through a movie magazine in art class at Vassar. Although she initially showed little inclination to follow her father's trade, she was prompted by director Joshua Logan to appear with her father in the 1954 Omaha Community Theatre production of The Country Girl. Before starting her acting career, Fonda was a fashion model, gracing the cover of Vogue twice. In 1958, she met Lee Strasberg and she went to study acting in earnest at the Actors Studio. In 1960, she made her Broadway debut in the play There Was a Little Girl, for which she received the first of two Tony Award nominations. Later the same year, she made her screen debut in the romantic comedy Tall Story (Joshua Logan, 1960), in which she recreated one of her Broadway roles as a college cheerleader pursuing a basketball star, played by Anthony Perkins. In Walk on the Wild Side (Edward Dmytryk, 1962), she played a prostitute and earned a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer. She rose to fame in such films as Period of Adjustment (George Roy Hill, 1962), Sunday in New York (Peter Tewksbury, 1963), Cat Ballou (Elliot Silverstein, 1965) opposite Lee Marvin, and Barefoot in the Park (Gene Saks, 1967), co-starring Robert Redford. Fonda also worked in France. She appeared opposite Alain Delon in the delightful sexy thriller Les félins/Joy House (René Clément, 1964). That same year, she was among the all-star cast of the anthology film La Ronde/Circle of Love (Roger Vadim, 1964), based on the classic Austrian novel Der Reigen by Arthur Schnitzler. Fonda astonished everyone (none as much as her father) by becoming one of the first major American actresses to appear nude in a foreign film. Director Roger Vadim became her first husband in 1965. He featured her as a sex goddess in his next films, La curée/Tears of Rapture (Roger Vadim, 1966) with Michel Piccoli, and a segment of the anthology film Histoires extraordinaires/Spirits of the Dead (Federico Fellini, Louis Malle, Roger Vadim, 1968), an adaptation of three horror stories by Edgar Allan Poe. In Vadim's segment, Metzgernstein, Fonda played a decadent contessa who falls in love with her pure cousin (the role of her brother Peter Fonda). In 1968, Jane featured in the title role in Vadim's psychedelic SF spoof Barbarella, establishing her status as a sex symbol. Despite the striptease-in-vacuum beginning and the kinky costumes, Barbarella is now a rather innocent and campy film. Brian J. Dillard at AllMovie: "Although it often pops up on 'Worst Movies Ever' lists, it's something of a treat if one approaches it with the right attitude. From the eye-popping plasticity of the production design to the gentle grooviness of the Bob Crewe Generation's campy lounge soundtrack, Barbarella is a defiantly trivial film. But Fonda's studied vacuity, Anita Pallenberg's kinky glamour, and John Phillip Law's bronzed pecs and hippie truisms keep things sexy, sweet, and funny. Fonda has spent more than three decades trying to live down the zero-gee peep show that opens the film, but besides a few bare breasts and countless double entendres, nothing here crosses the line between erotic comedy and pornography."A turning point in her career was the American social drama They Shoot Horses, Don't They (Sydney Pollack, 1969). She played one of the contenders in a desperate dance marathon in 1932, during the Great Depression. Fonda herself considers They Shoot Horses, Don't They? as one of her best films. She went on to win the Best Actress Oscar for the crime thriller Klute (Alan J. Pakula, 1971). In France, Fonda next starred as a reporter alongside Yves Montand in Tout Va Bien (Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin, 1972). A year later, she divorced from Vadim.

Jane Fonda is a seven-time Academy Award nominee. She won her second Best Actress Oscar for the Vietnam drama Coming Home (1978). Her other nominations were for her portrayal of the playwright Lillian Hellman in Julia (Fred Zinnemann, 1977), The China Syndrome (James Bridges, 1979) opposite Michael Douglas, On Golden Pond (Mark Rydell, 1981) with Katherine Hepburn and her father Henry Fonda, and The Morning After (Sidney Lumet, 1986) with Jeff Bridges. In 1982, Jane Fonda released her first exercise video, Jane Fonda's Workout, which became the highest-selling video of the time. It would be the first of the 22 workout videos she released over the next 13 years, selling over 17 million copies. Divorced from her second husband, the politician Tom Hayden in 1990, she married media mogul Ted Turner in 1991 and retired from acting. Divorced from Turner in 2001, she returned to acting with her first film in 15 years with the comedy Monster in Law (Robert Luketic, 2005) opposite Jennifer Lopez. Subsequent films have included Georgia Rule (Garry Marshall, 2007) with Lindsay Lohan, the French drama Et si on vivait tous ensemble?/All Together (Stéphane Robelin, 2011), The Butler (Lee Daniels, 2013) as First Lady Nancy Reagan, and This Is Where I Leave You (Shawn Levy, 2014). In 2009, she returned to Broadway after a 45-year absence, in the play '33 Variations', which earned her a Tony Award nomination, while her recurring role in the HBO drama series The Newsroom (2012-2014), earned her two Emmy Award nominations. She also released another five exercise videos between 2010 and 2012. Jane Fonda has been an activist for many political causes. Her counterculture-era opposition to the Vietnam War included her being photographed sitting on an anti-aircraft battery on a 1972 visit to Hanoi, which was very controversial. She has also protested the Iraq War and violence against women and describes herself as a feminist. In 2005, she, Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem co-founded the Women's Media Center, an organization that works to amplify the voices of women in the media through advocacy, media and leadership training, and the creation of original content. Fonda currently serves on the board of the organisation. Jane Fonda published the autobiography My Life So Far in 2005. In 2011, she published a second memoir, Prime Time. She has two children, daughter Vanessa Vadim (1968) with Roger Vadim, and Troy O'Donovan Hayden (aka Troy Garity) (1973) with Tom Hayden. In the past decade, Jane Fonda appeared in several new films and series. A highlight was Youth (2015), directed by Paolo Sorrentino and starring Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel.

Sources: Brian J. Dillard (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Laurence Dang (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Tags:   Jane Fonda Jane Fonda American Actress Actrice Hollywood Film Star Cinema Film Cine Kino Picture Screen Movie Movies Filmster Star Vintage Postcard

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French postcard. Fernandel and Jacqueline Pagnol in Nais (Raymond Leboursier, Marcel Pagnol, 1945).

For more than forty years, actor and singer Fernandel (1903-1971) was France's top comedy star. He was perhaps best loved for his portrayal of Don Camillo. His horse-like teeth and shy manner became his trademark.

Fernandel was born Fernand Joseph Désiré Contandin in Marseille, France, as the son of a music-hall entertainer. His brother Fransined would become an actor too. Fernandel began performing while still a child. In his teens, he supported himself in a variety of jobs while gaining experience as an amateur comedian and singer. In 1922 he turned professional, soon becoming popular in vaudeville, operettas, and music-hall revues. He married with Henriette Manse in 1925. His film debut was in Le blanc et le noir/White and Black (Robert Florey, Marc Allégret, 1930) at the side of Raimu. Marc Allégret also directed his first successful film, La meilleure bobonne (Marc Allégret, Claude Heymann, 1930). Very popular was his serious role in the screen adaptation of Guy de Maupassant's Le Rosier de Madame Husson/The Virgin Man (Bernard-Deschamps, 1932). Writer/director Marcel Pagnol used his immense talent and great sensitivity in a series of films: as a half-witted in Angèle (1934), Regain/Harvest (1937), Le Schpountz/Heartbeat (1938), La Fille du puisatier/The Well-Digger's Daughter (1940), and later as a scrupulously honest schoolteacher in Topaze (1951). Fernandel became a typical actor of the comedy genre: popular, common, likeable and with a concealed grain of drama. For over four decades, he was France's most popular comedy star in nearly 150 films.

Fernandel was perhaps best loved for his portrayal of Don Camillo, the humorously indomitable priest of a little Italian parish at war with the village's communist mayor, Peppone (played by Gino Cervi) in the popular film series of the 1950s. Director Julien Duvivier first brought the books by Giovanni Guareschi to life in Le Petit monde de Don Camillo/The Little World of Don Camillo (1951) and Le Retour de Don Camillo/The Return of Don Camillo (1953). With other directors, Fernandel made La Grande bagarre de Don Camillo/Don Camillo's Last Round (Carmine Gallone, 1955), Don Camillo Monseigneur/Don Camillo: Monsignor (Carmine Gallone, 1961), and Don Camillo en Russie/Don Camillo in Moscow (Luigi Comencini, 1965). Among his other successes were L'auberge rouge/The Red Inn (Claude Autant-Lara, 1951), Ali Baba et les quarante voleurs/Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (Jacques Becker, 1954) and La Vache et le Prisonnier/The Cow and I (Henri Verneuil, 1959). He also appeared in Italian and American films. His first Hollywood motion picture was Around the World in Eighty Days (Michael Anderson, 1956) in which he played David Niven's coachman. His popular performance in that film led to starring with Bob Hope and Anita Ekberg in the comedy Paris Holiday (Gerd Oswald, 1958). In addition to acting, Fernandel also directed or co-produced several of his films. In 1970 Fernandel started with the shooting of the sixth Don Camillo film, Don Camillo et les contestastaires/Don Camillo and the Youth of Today, directed by Christian-Jaque. After a few weeks, he had to stop because of poor health. Shortly afterwards Fernandel died from lung cancer. He is buried in the Cimetière de Passy, Paris, France. Fernandel and his wife Henriette had three children, including actor Franck Fernandel and actress Josette Contandin.

Sources: Volker Boehm (IMDb), Wikipedia, AllMovie, and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Tags:   Fernandel French Actor Film Star Acteur Comic European Jacqueline Pagnol Jacqueline Pagnol Actress Cinema Cine Kino Film Picture Screen Movie Movies Filmster Star Vintage Postcard Nais 1945

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Vintage promotion card by CBS.

American actor and singer Don Johnson (1949) won a Golden Globe in 1986 for his lead role as James 'Sonny' Crockett in the police series Miami Vice, in which he played more than 100 episodes. Earlier, he was acclaimed for his lead role in the Science-Fiction film A Boy and His Dog (1975). Although he had been acting since 1970, he also released two music albums. His biggest hit was 'Heartbeat' from the 1986 album of the same name. His later films include Tin Cup (1996), Machete (2010), Django Unchained (2012) and Knives Out (2019).

Donnie 'Don' Wayne Johnson was born in Flat Creek, Missouri, in 1949. He is the son of Freddie Wayne Johnson, a farmer and Nell Johnson (née Wilson), a beautician. When he was six years old, his family moved to Kansas. In 1967, he graduated from Wichita South High School, where he was involved in the high school's theatre program. As a senior, he played the lead role of Tony in 'West Side Story'. He studied at the University of Kansas as a theatre major but dropped out after one year, and moved to San Francisco to study drama at the American Conservatory Theatre. In 1969, he starred in the Los Angeles stage production 'Fortune and Men's Eyes'. The play included a prison rape scene with Johnson as the victim. He made his film debut as Stanley Sweetheart in the quickly forgotten drama The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart (Leonard Horn, 1970) about a confused college student's experiences with sex, relationships, and drugs. Johnson continued to work on stage, film and television without breaking into stardom. His notable films from this period were the acid Western Zachariah (George Englund, 1971), the coming-of-age film The Harrad Experiment (Ted Post, 1973), Lollipop and Roses (1974) and the ci-Fi black comedy A Boy and His Dog (L. Q. Jones, 1975). In 1976, Johnson was the roommate of actor Sal Mineo at the time Mineo was murdered. Every TV pilot in which Johnson starred failed to launch. He was nicknamed a six-time loser in Hollywood because he was part of six series that did not make it to television. In the 1980s, Johnson managed to get into a series that became successful, Miami Vice. He played the role of undercover police detective Sonny Crockett and formed a legendary police duo with Philip Michael Thomas as Ricardo Tubbs. John Russell at IMDb: "It revolutionized television with its modern fashion, pop music, unique style and use of real locations." Crockett embodied the masculine cool of the 1980s with his thousand-dollar Versace and Hugo Boss suits over pastel cotton T-shirts, his Ferrari, Rolex and Endeavour yacht. Miami Vice aired between 1984 and 1990. Johnson won a Golden Globe and received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for his role. Between seasons on Miami Vice, Johnson starred in TV miniseries such as the remake The Long, Hot Summer (Stuart Cooper, 1985). As a singer, he released the albums 'Heartbeat' (1986) and 'Let It Roll' (1989). His 'Heartbeat' cover version peaked at no. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. After the series ended he focused solely on his film career. Although films like Dead Bang (John Frankenheimer, 1989), The Hot Spot (Dennis Hopper, 1990) and Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man (Simon Wincer, 1991) with Mickey Rourke, did not fare well with the critics, quite a few of them have obtained a considerable cult following.

In the late 1990s, Don Johnson became successful again as Nash in the television series Nash Bridges (1996-2001) about a detective with the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD). Johnson received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1996. In 2005, Johnson briefly starred in the courtroom television drama show Just Legal as a jaded lawyer with a young and idealistic protégé/partner (Jay Baruchel). It was cancelled after just three episodes. Johnson appeared in the West End of London production of 'Guys and Dolls' (2007). He also appeared in films like the sports film Tin Cup (Ron Shelton, 1996) with Kevin Costner, the Neo-Noir comedy Goodbye Lover (Roland Joffé, 1998) with Patricia Arquette, the romantic comedy When in Rome (Mark Steven Johnson, 2010) with Kristen Bell and Josh Duhamel, and the exploitation action film Machete (Robert Rodriguez, Ethan Maniquis, 2010). Johnson travelled to Europe to make the Norwegian screwball comedy Lange flate ballær II/Long Flat Balls II (Harald Zwart, 2008) and the Italian films Bastardi/Bastards (Federico Del Zoppo, Andres Alce Meldonado, 2008) with Franco Nero, and Torno a vivere da solo/I'll Be Back to Living Alone (Jerry Calà, 2008). In 2012, Quentin Tarantino, a fan of Miami Vice, gave Johnson a role in his film Django Unchained. Johnson played a southern plantation owner named Spencer 'Big Daddy' Bennett. In 2014, he played seasoned Texas Ranger Earl McGraw in Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series. In 2019, Johnson played Richard Drysdale in the murder mystery Knives Out (Rian Johnson, 2019) starring Daniel Craig and acted as Police Chief Judd Crawford in the superhero series Watchmen (2019). Don Johnson married actress Melanie Griffith twice, the first time for a short period in 1976. Between 1981 and 1985, Johnson lived with actress Patti D'Arbanville. They have a son, actor Jesse Johnson (1982). Johnson had a relationship with Barbra Streisand. Together, they recorded the single 'Till I Loved You'. Between 1989 and 1996, Johnson was married for the second time to Melanie Griffith. In 1989, they had a daughter, film star Dakota Johnson. Johnson married Kelley Phleger in 1999, with whom he had three children: a daughter, Atherton Grace (1999), and two sons, Jasper Breckinridge (2002) and Deacon (2006).

Sources: John Russell (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch and English) and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

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