The Face Is Familiar

MM look-alike Sybil Saulnier.

Resemblances

Okay, so I'm watching this movie, right?
It's about this grumpy old guy. In the past he's killed a lot of men. The old guy is sick. In fact, he's dying. He meets this kid who's clueless and immature. He also meets a woman who's related to the stupid kid. The woman's presence seems to make the old guy less crusty and more human. At the same time, the old guy teaches the clueless kid to grow up and fly right. Near the end, the old guy gets his life in order and gets his hair cut. He's preparing for a showdown. The old guy goes out in a blaze of glory instead of letting his illness kill him.
Here's the question:
Am I watching John Wayne in The Shootist (1976) or Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino (2008)?
. . .
In other news, I finally saw Quentin Tarantino's 153-minute Inglourious Basterds, which I understand he cut down from 190 minutes (Thanks, Dude!) and which I will certainly watch again, once he's edited it down to a manageable 105 minutes. My favorite character, of course, is Brad Pitt's Lt. Aldo Raine, mainly because he doesn't regurgitate reams of dialogue. I also note how much actress Diane Kruger resembles Lilian Harvey. For a much more positive take on the film, see Kim Morgan.

Evelyn Brent & Stevie Nicks

Okay, so I see this photo of actress
Evelyn Brent, and it reminds me of
Stevie Nicks, which is really weird.
I checked out other photos of Evelyn,
but they don't look like Stevie. So it's
just this one. Great eyes, these two.





Oh, and they both like to wear really,
really complicated dresses.

Twisted Sisters

Turner Classic Movies, the best darn channel on American television, was showing a biography of Joan Crawford this morning. There was a clip of Mildred Pierce (1945), and Ann Blyth was playing Joan Crawford's spoiled, unruly, snot-bag daughter, Veda. Her lips quivered. Her mouth pouted. Her chin jutted. I was reminded of a story about John Ford directing John Wayne in one of his early pictures. Ford stopped the take and yelled at John Wayne, saying, "You're acting with your chin." Or words to that effect. What he wanted from Wayne was an expressive face, not just a twitching chin. Anyway, in Mildred Pierce, young actress Ann Blyth was acting with her pouty lips. And that reminded me a lot of Joey Heatherton, who very often acted with her pouty mouth and sometimes her hips. So I ventured out on the World Wide Spider Web and found a pile of photos of Ann Blyth and Joey Heatherton and their funny, pouty mouths. And I glued some of them together, you know, for scientific comparison. And it turned out freaking spooky.

Or maybe it's just their beady little eyes and

sour little mouths. (Or maybe it's just me.)

Really Spooky!

So I'm watching the 2002 John Woo movie Windtalkers last night, right? And Nicolas Cage is wandering around, looking strung out and burnt out and worn out, like he has for a decade, and this Navy nurse appears, to add a little color and femininity to the proceedings, and I fall out of my friggin' chair. The name of the actress escapes me momentarily, but I'm thinking, Holy Cow, she still looks great! And there are a lot of explosions, and the Japanese lose the war, okay? And the credits roll. And I see that the nurse, Rita, is played by someone named Frances O'Conner. That must be wrong, I think. The part of nurse Rita was played by that really cute actress from the movies Suspiria (1977) and My Favorite Year (1982). You know, the one, right? I have to look it up on the IMDb.
Jessica Harper!
Yeah, that's it. I Image-Google both names and, sure as sh!t, they're twins. And I'm not the only one who thinks so. Apparently, some guy from Hollywood Confidential noticed that four years ago. It even says they look alike in the IMDb. I am, so, like out of date on this. Jeez!
So. . . Hasn't anyone in Hollywoodland yet figured out the dramatic possibilities of having two actresses who look so much alike but are of completely separate generations? And I don't mean just mother-daughter roles. I mean, like a bio-pic of, say, Zelda Fitzgerald with Frances O'Connor playing the youthful part and Jessica Harper playing the older, schizophrenic part. Or something about a time machine, where Nicolas Cage plays a burnt out, hard-drinking mad scientist, and John Woo blows up the mad scientist's laboratory with CGI effects, and they create a Frankenstein-like creature, and name him "Woody Allen." And, of course, they create a bride for the monster. And the creature grows old with Jessica Harper, but then, POW! She changes into Frances O'Connor. And she's young again. And Woody Frankenstein marries her, but he keeps getting older and older and weirder, and she just looks great. Right? Something cool like that. It would be better than just recycling Batman plots, wouldn't it?
Alas, I digress.
Jessica Harper is still around and still acting.
Frances O'Connor looks just like her. Which is spooky.
And both of them look great.




(Okay, so Frances O'Connor and Jessica Harper don't look
like Zelda Fitzgerald, right? But no one remembers what
Zelda looked like, okay? So it might work.)

Italian Spices - Elsa Martinelli

For a long time, I couldn't tell Elsa Martinelli from
Laura Antonelli, and it's not just because they both
rhyme with Vincent Minnelli.
In 1957, Elsa Martinelli played a discovered starlet
named Maria Antonelli in Four Girls in Town,
which is an interesting slice of Universal Pictures
history if not a particularly good movie. Then, of
course, she appeared in the famous 1960 lesbian
vampire film Blood and Roses (aka Et Mourir de
plaisir or Il Sangue e la rosa). So you knew that
she was really cool. And then she showed up as
John Wayne's girlfriend in the African western
Hatari! (1962), and it really seemed ridiculous
that a young, hip European beauty would actually
fall for the geezerly Duke Wayne (but then I think
Wayne and his usual band of aging misfits were
drunk in Tanzania). Then she showed up in Candy
(1968) and If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium
(1969), and you knew the world was right again.
And, in between there somewhere, she appeared
in the Eddie Constantine-Henry Silva crime thriller
Hail, Mafia (1965), which I'm actually gonna have
to sit down and watch some day. Anyway, she was
cute, worked as a fashion model, and was on the
cover a Life magazine a couple of times, so she
deserves a post here at Starlet Showcase.

Italian Spices - Laura Antonelli

For a long time, I couldn't tell Laura Antonelli from
Elsa Martinelli and not just because they both rhyme
with vermicelli.
Laura Antonelli was once a gym teacher and Jean-Paul
Belmondo's girlfriend. She appeared in a slip in the 1966
American International Pictures-Vincent Price epic
comedy Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs, and she
appeared without a slip in the 1969 sleaze-fest Venus
in Furs (aka Le Malizie di Venere), which is not to be
confused with the 1969 Jesus Franco sleaze-fest
Venus in Furs (aka Paroxismus), although I'm pretty
certain that it would be difficult to make an entertaining
and yet healthy film from the original novel by
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. In any case, Laura did a
lot of nudity in the 60s and 70s, and there are loads of
those kinds of pictures on the Internet. But she starred
in a movie with Vincent Price and Sixties singing
sensation Fabian, so she deserves a post here at
Starlet Showcase.

Attack of the Horror Clone Beauties

How to tell the difference between
Yvonne Furneaux, Kate O'Mara, and Debra Paget:

Yvonne was in Federico Fellini's La Dolce vita and Roman Polanski's Repulsion, but she was never in an Elvis movie. She appeared with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in the 1959 Hammer film The Mummy.

Kate O'Mara was in the TV shows Danger Man, The Saint, The Avengers, and Doctor Who, but she was never in an Elvis movie. She appeared with Peter Cushing in the 1970 Hammer horror film The Vampire Lovers.

Debra Paget was in the Roger Corman films Tales of Terror and The Haunted Palace with Vincent Price, plus she was in the Elvis film Love Me Tender. A clip of her from The Haunted Palace appeared with Peter Cushing in the 1974 horror film Madhouse. (And she had the best legs.)

In La Dolce vita, hardly anyone noticed Yvonne, because they were all watching Anita Ekberg (a blonde). In Repulsion, hardly anyone noticed Yvonne, because they were all watching Catherine Deneuve (a great blonde).

In The Vampire Lovers (a fascinating film), hardly anyone noticed Kate, because they were all watching Ingrid Pitt and Madeline Smith.

In Love Me Tender, everyone (even Elvis) noticed Debra Paget.

(Peter Cushing had a great life!)