30 Friday Apr 2021
Posted in Film, Jeanne Eagels
≈ Comments Off on From Jeanne, to Bette: A Tale of Two Letters
Before its restoration in 2013, Jeanne Eagels’ penultimate movie, The Letter (1929), was falling into obscurity. But while the 1940 remake is more accomplished overall, Jeanne’s performance as a frustrated colonial wife more than holds up against Bette Davis in the same role. An in-depth comparison between the two is posted at the Notoriously Nora movie blog today. Continue reading
26 Monday Apr 2021
Posted in Film, Jeanne Eagels
≈ Comments Off on And the (Posthumous) Oscar Goes to…
Tags
Academy Awards, Anthony Hopkins, Chadwick Boseman, Jeanne Eagels, Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed, Johnny Oleksinski, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, New York Post, Oscars, The Letter
Last night’s Academy Awards was an unusual event in more ways than one. Firstly, the pandemic made it something of a bare-bones affair. And secondly, the favourite to win in the Best Actor category – Chadwick Boseman, for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom – passed away in 2020, aged 43, after a long battle with cancer. In another change of routine, this award was presented at the end of the ceremony, with winner Anthony Hopkins, in a speech given from his home in Wales, acknowledging his fellow nominee: “At 83 years of age, I did not expect to get this award, I really didn’t … I want to pay tribute to Chadwick Boseman, who was taken from us far too early.”
In her own way, Jeanne Eagels was as much an icon of the Roaring Twenties as Ma Rainey, and as several media outlets have noted lately, she also heads up the select group of actors who earned Oscar nominations posthumously. Continue reading
07 Thursday Nov 2019
Posted in Anniversaries, Jeanne Eagels, Theatre
≈ Comments Off on The ‘Rain Girl’ in November
As noted in the Playbill Vault, Jeanne Eagels began her legendary Broadway run as Sadie Thompson, “a prostitute at odds with a jungle missionary in Rain, primarily based on a W. Somerset Maugham quick story,” on this day, November 7, in 1922. We’re now just three years away from its centenary. Continue reading
16 Monday Sep 2019
Posted in Art and Photography, Jeanne Eagels
≈ Comments Off on ‘The Best Way to Forget, Until You Find Something You Want to Remember’
Tags
'The Best Way to Forget Until You Find Something You Want to Remember', Amy Winehouse, Bette Davis, Christine Keeler, Cob Gallery, If You Don't Want My Peaches (You Better Stop Shaking the Tree), Jean Harlow, Jeanne Eagels, Kim Novak, Madonna, Marilyn Monroe, Nina Mae Fowler, Rita Hayworth, The Letter
Nina Mae Fowler is a British artist who trained at the University of Brighton, and lives in Norfolk. Her latest solo exhibition, If You Don’t Want My Peaches (You’d Better Stop Shaking the Tree), on display at London’s Cob Gallery until September 28, borrows its title from an Irving Berlin song, and draws heavily on the iconography of Hollywood’s golden age. I was delighted to find Jeanne Eagels among the subjects, as she is often neglected. This portrait shows Jeanne in her penultimate movie (and only surviving talkie), The Letter (1929.) Continue reading
18 Friday Jan 2019
Posted in Film, Jeanne Eagels
≈ Comments Off on ‘Peak Strange’: The Jeanne Eagels Biopic
Tags
Biopic, Farran Smith Nehme, Helen Morgan, Jeanne Eagels, Jeanne Eagels (1957), Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed, Kim Novak, Sam H. Harris, Virginia Grey
Whenever I mention Jeanne Eagels, movie fans invariably ask if I’ve seen Kim Novak playing her onscreen. And my answer is usually this: “love Kim, hate the film.” Over at her Self-Styled Siren blog today, Farran Smith Nehme takes a closer look at the ‘Highly Fictionalised Biopics’ that were all the rage in 1957. (Jeanne’s friend, singer Helen Morgan, was another victim that year.) Continue reading
