Sex Education #102

Barbara Steele
An Ongoing Series of Cultural and Personal Observations
by Tom Sutpen, Stephen Cooke, Richard Gibson and Kimberly Lindbergs

Gary Cooper drops by the set of Union Pacific to chat with Cecil B. DeMille while Joel McCrea looks slightly incredulous.

Today's Adventure: British mystery maven Edgar Wallace takes a stab at directing Red Aces in 1929.

Original Caption:
Hollywood -- Liberace, piano-playing idol of women television audiences, revealed that he hopes to marry Joanne Rio, 24, the "Girl of his Dreams", in a year. In an exclusive United Press interview, Liberace confided he had proposed and hoped to marry Joanne within the year "if she really loves me and wants to wait for me." He said concert, television and film commitments would keep him from marrying for a year. Here, the two are shown during a recent date at a Hollywood supper club. (1954)

Lancelot du Lac
(Robert Bresson; 1974)
(vast and Arthurian thanks to John Macdonald for this image)

Atlanta, Georgia (1968)
this was posted by Tomasso Sutpenno
for the series:
Cinema in the Shadow of History

Original Caption:
Police are shown carrying out the body of Serge Rubinstein from his Fifth Avenue home where he was found slain today in an upstairs bedroom. Authorities said that the Russian born millionaire appeared to have been strangled. His body was found with hands and feet tied and the mouth taped. It is believed that he died after a "terrific struggle" with an intruder. According to police, "it could have been robbery" but the theory of planned attack was not ruled out. The 46 year old international financier was the central figure of a World War II 'draft dodger' case, and prior to his death had been fighting a deportation order. (1955)

Original Caption:
New York -- Gambler Frank Costello, head bandaged and blood on his coat, is escorted by detectives from Roosevelt Hospital. Costello, returning to his swank apartment after an evening out, was shot and wounded by an unknown assailant who apparently lay in ambush for him. According to the superintendent, who witnessed the shooting, the gunman waited in a car. (1957)

Jack Oakie
No. 34 in a series of 50 from Player's Navy Cut Cigarettes
Jack Oakie, whose real name is Lewis Offield, was born on November 14th, 1903, in Sedalia, Missouri, and educated at La Salle High School, New York. Leaving school, he became a clerk in the the office of a Wall Street broker, but chiefly occupied himself in entertaining the other clerks and devoting much more attention to his activities in amateur theatricals. Later he was offered a job as partner to a well-known vaudeville star, and then received a small part in a Laura La Plante comedy Finders Keepers. His latest successes include Murder at the Vanities, Looking for Trouble and Shoot the Works.

The Hitchcock/Truffaut Tapes make a tranquil return to this blog.
Under discussion in Part Fourteen are Notorious (1946) and The Paradine Case (1947)

Charles Chaplin, Sid Grauman and Buster Keaton in Mickey's Gala Premiere.
(Burt Gillett; Disney; 1933)

Stephen Glass
this was posted by Tomasso Sutpenno
for the series:
Great Con Artists of the 20th Century

Robert Creeley

Six sixguns are pointed at James Stewart in this publicity still for the Columbia Pictures release, The Man from Laramie (1955)

Today's Adventure: His arm in a sling, Charles 'Sonny' Liston faces the press the morning after the first Clay-Liston tankout. (1964)
this was posted by Tomasso Sutpenno
for the series:
Adventures in the Fight Racket

John Phillip Law takes aim in Mario Bava's delirious Danger: Diabolik.
A dependable and charismatic staple of Europop cinema in the '60s and '70s, and a busy actor up until he was recently sidelined by an undisclosed illness, John Phillip Law passed away in Los Angeles this week.
Read the AP obituary here.
And as you might expect, Tim Lucas's Video Watchblog has some fond parting words for Pygar here.