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Tara Hanks

~ Author of 'The Mmm Girl' and 'Wicked Baby'

Tara Hanks

Tag Archives: Lee Strasberg

The Many Faces of Nehemiah Persoff

19 Tuesday Apr 2022

Posted by marina72 in Film, Marilyn Monroe, Television, Theatre

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Actors Studio, Alvah Bessie, Arthur Miller, Billy Wilder, Bus Stop, Charles Lederer, Clash By Night, Death of a Salesman, Edward G. Robinson, Elia Kazan, Lee Strasberg, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Nehemiah Persoff, Some Like It Hot, The Sex Symbol, The Symbol, Tony Curtis

The great character actor Nehemiah Persoff, whose many roles included the mobster ‘Little Bonaparte’ in Some Like It Hot, has died at the grand old age of 102.

Nehemiah was born in Jerusalem in 1919. His parents had met as amateur actors fleeing the Jewish pogroms in Odessa, Ukraine for Israel. His father became a teacher and moved to New York, with the family joining him later. “This was 1929, close to the market crash that led to the Great Depression,” he wrote. “I hated this dirty place, Brooklyn … I cried myself to sleep for two years before I began to accept the fact that America was my new home.”

On the streets of Brooklyn, poverty and violence were commonplace, and the young Nehemiah – known to his friends as ‘Nicky’ – soon learned to fight back. “Actually, many of the so-called ‘lowlifes’ I knew were not bad guys at all,” he recalled. “They did what they did because that was the only way they could live. In playing gangsters later on, I always tried to find some good in them.” Continue reading →

The Actress and the Goddess: Joan Copeland and Marilyn

12 Wednesday Jan 2022

Posted by marina72 in Film, Marilyn Monroe, Theatre

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Actors Studio, Arthur Miller, Augusta Miller, Conversation Piece, Isidore Miller, Joan Copeland, Lee Strasberg, Marilyn Monroe, Middle of the Night, Paddy Chayefsky, Rebecca Miller, The Goddess

Joan Maxine Miller was born to Augusta Barnett, a schoolteacher and housewife, and Isidore Miller, a Polish immigrant and clothing manufacturer, in Manhattan in 1922. She was their youngest child and only daughter, joining her older brothers, nine-year-old Kermit and six-year-old Arthur. While Arthur was his mother’s favourite, Isidore doted on little Joan. “After waiting so long for a girl,” she recalled, “there I was, this pretty angel … I was like a doll.” Continue reading →

Peter Bogdanovich: From Marilyn’s Classmate to Hollywood Auteur

06 Thursday Jan 2022

Posted by marina72 in Film, Marilyn Monroe

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Actors Studio, Arthur Miller, Clash By Night, Clifford Odets, David Marshall, Dorothy Stratten, Fritz Lang, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, George Cukor, Howard Hawks, Lee Strasberg, Life Among The Cannibals, Marilyn Monroe, Monkey Business, Peter Bogdanovich, The Last Picture Show

Peter Bogdanovich, the filmmaker, actor and historian, has died of natural causes at home in Los Angeles, aged 82. He was born in Kingston, New York in 1939, to immigrant parents who had recently fled Nazi-occupied Europe. Herma, his mother, was an Austrian-born Jew; while his father Borislav, a painter and pianist, was a Serbian Orthodox Christian. Peter attended classes at the Actors Studio as a teenager, and later studied acting at the Stella Adler Conservatory. Continue reading →

Marilyn Monroe: Auction of a Lifetime

24 Monday Apr 2017

Posted by marina72 in Marilyn Monroe, Television

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Channel 4, David Gainsborough Roberts, Documentaries, Elizabeth Winder, Frieda Hull, Immortal Marilyn, Julien's Auctions, Lee Strasberg, Lois Banner, Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn Monroe: Auction of a Lifetime, Sarah Churchwell

This article can also be read at Immortal Marilyn. (And if you’re looking for a more detailed view of the sale, I also wrote a series of reports on my Marilyn-only blog, ES Updates.) Continue reading →

Shooting Stars: Jeanne Eagels and Marilyn

27 Saturday Jun 2015

Posted by marina72 in Books, Fiction, Film, Jeanne Eagels, Marilyn Monroe, Non-Fiction

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All About Eve, Chloral Hydrate, Christian Science, Clifton Webb, Dr Edward Spencer Cowles, Dr Hyman Engelberg, Dr Ralph Greenson, Fredric March, George Arliss, George Cukor, Immortal Marilyn, Jeanne Eagels, Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed, Jenny Lind, Joe DiMaggio, Joe Schenck, Joseph M. Schenck, Lee Strasberg, Marilyn Monroe, Missouri, Rain, Sadie Thompson, Ted Coy, W. Somerset Maugham

Jeanne Eagles - 1920s. Restored by Nick and jane for Dr. Macro's High Quality Movie Scans website: http://www.doctormacro.com/index.html. Enjoy!

Jeanne Eagels during filming of ‘Jealousy’ (1929)

In a new article for Immortal Marilyn, I explore the common ground between Marilyn Monroe and Jeanne Eagels. You can read it here.

Earlier this month, I posted two extracts from The Mmm Girl, my Marilyn-inspired novel, which describe Marilyn’s attempt to remake Rain. It was not to be, but many thought she was the only actress who could match Jeanne’s performance as Sadie Thompson.

Marilyn by Milton Greene, 1956

Marilyn by Milton Greene, 1956

Marilyn also features as one of several ‘other Sadies’ in Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed (co-authored with Eric Woodard.) Here is a short excerpt from the introduction to our new biography.

There are surprising parallels between the life of Jeanne Eagels and Marilyn Monroe, another tragic star. Like Jeanne, Marilyn had known poverty and pursued her career with fierce determination. The hauntingly lovely Jeanne was initially typecast as an ingénue, while Marilyn fought to escape the image of a sexy, dumb blonde. Their lives were chronicled in microscopic detail by the press, and each came to rely on an evergrowing entourage of doctors and acting coaches. Eagels’ failed marriage to a famed football player mirrored Monroe’s to a retired baseball icon, and both frequently clashed with their bosses and co-stars. Marilyn once was even considering a remake of Rain.

But while thousands of books and scores of documentaries, films, and videos have been dedicated to Marilyn Monroe, Jeanne Eagels has been unjustly neglected. She was robbed of the chance to bring Sadie Thompson to the big screen, though those who saw her onstage said her greatest performance was never surpassed. In her lifetime, Eagels briefly enjoyed the critical acclaim Monroe craved, and would finally achieve posthumously. But in the years after Jeanne’s death, a steady trickle of malicious gossip clouded her glow, reducing her to that most spectral of beings—a legend without a face. In Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed, we explore the woman behind the enigma, a feisty yet fragile diva who became a genuine phenomenon. A phenomenon worth revealing … and rediscovering.

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