Truus, Bob & Jan too! posted a photo:
British postcard by Paramount. Photo: Paramount. James Spader, Jon Cryer, Mollie Ringwald and Andrew McCarthy in Pretty in Pink (Howard Deutch, 1986).
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Truus, Bob & Jan too! posted a photo:
German postcard by Photochemie, no. K. 2255. Photo: Mac Walten, Berlin.
Martha Orlanda (1886- 1970) was a German silent film actress and screenwriter.
Martha Orlanda was born Matyha Schlinkmann in 1886 in Marchienne-au-Pont, Belgium. She first attended elementary school and then a secondary school for girls. There are claims that she auditioned at the age of 13 at the Residenz Theatre in Cologne to perform there. The girl was eventually hired for a monthly salary of 75 marks. However, her relatives ended this ‘experiment’ after a year. In 1917, the 30-year-old moved to Berlin with her mother, Josephine Schlinkmann, where William Kahn discovered her and brought her in front of the camera. Martha Orlanda made her silent film debut alongside Izza Dombronowska in Der Fall Dombronowska-Clemenceau, the film adaptation of a literary work by Alexandre Dumas. That year, another film adaptation was made in Italy, called Il processo Clemenceau (1917), starring the diva Francesca Bertini.
By the end of 1921, Martha Orlanda had made twelve films, for which she also wrote the screenplays. Otto Rippert's highly speculative two-part educational and social drama Der Weg, der zur Verdammnis führt / The Road to Damnation (1919) caused a major scandal when it premiered. Her other silent films also dealt predominantly with dramatic or melodramatic themes. In 1922, Martha Orlanda ended her short-lived film career. On 26 September 1924, she married Theodor Schulte-Holthausen (1889–1945), a lawyer and then senior government official at the Reichsversorgungsgericht (Reich Supply Court). They had a son in 1926. Her husband died in Soviet captivity a few months after the end of the Second World War. Martha Orlanda continued to live in Berlin-Wilmersdorf until the mid-1950s, before moving to Heessen in Westphalia to be with her son and his family. At the age of 80, she finally moved to a retirement home in the pilgrimage town of Neviges, where she had many friends. The former actress died there in May 1970.
Sources: IMDb and Wikipedia (German).
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Truus, Bob & Jan too! posted a photo:
Vintage British postcard, 1910s. Hepworth Picture Player. P.C. 2. NB IMDb does not list a Alma Taylor film with the title The Girl Who Believed, so it may just be a tagline accentuating what we see.
Alma Taylor (1895-1974) was a British actress, who peeked in the British silent cinema of the 1910s and 1920s. In 1915 readers of Pictures and Picturegoers voted her most popular British performer, beating even Charlie Chaplin. Taylor acted in over 150 films, among which some prestigious examples like Shadow of Egypt (1924) by Sidney Morgan.
Alma Taylor was born in London, on 3 January 1895. According to Anthony Slide, brunette, blue-eyed Alma Taylor was the Hepworth actress 'par excellence'. Beginning in 1907, she already acted with producer Cecil Hepworth, playing tragic young girls. She then co-starred with Chrissie White in Hepworth's 'Tilly Girl' comic series (1910-1915) about two naughty schoolgirls, as well as in 75 or more short and long subjects by Hepworth, such as the Dickens adaptations Oliver Twist (1912), David Copperfield (Thomas Bentley) and The Old Curiosity Shop (Bentley 1913). In those days , everyone helped out at the studios, so both Alma and Chrissie helped in the processing rooms when the weather was too poor to shoot. During the First World War and soon after Taylor contributed to the war effort by acting in such propaganda films like The Nature of the Beast (Hepworth 1919). Taylor clearly was the producer's favorite, and remained devoted to him for decades, starring opposite Ralph Forbes in the rather old-fashioned British countryside drama Comin' Thro the Rye (1923), a remake of an earlier version by Hepworth. After a temporal absence from the screen, Hepworth relaunched Taylor in his last film, The House of Marney (1926), with John Longden. In 1924, the Daily News named her, along with Betty Balfour, Britain's top star. Alma Taylor only starred in four non-Hepworth films: The Shadow of Egypt (Sidney Morgan, 1924) with Joan Morgan, Quinneys (Maurice Elvey, 1927), A South Sea Bubble (T. Hays Hunter 1928) with Ivor Novello, and Two Little Drummer Boys (G.B.Samuelson, 1928). In the late silent era she did some German films, including her part of Mrs. Barrymore in Der Hund von Baskerville/ The Hound of the Baskervilles (Richard Oswald 1929), a film longtime considered lost but rediscovered in 2009. With the coming of sound, however, Taylor's career dwindled and she had to satisfy with minor, matronly roles, in small number of films, such as Bachelor's Baby (Harry Hughes, 1932), Things Are Looking Up (Albert de Courville, 1935), Lilacs in the Spring (Herbert Wilcox, 1954), and Blue Murder at St. Trinian's (Frank Launder, 1957). Uncredited, she played a box office woman in Hitchcock's second vserion of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956). Probably her last part was the uncredited role of an old lady in the Titanic-drama by Rank, A Night to Remember (Roy Ward Baker 1958). Alma Taylor died in London, 23 January 1974. She was the wife of film producer and director Walter West (1885-1958), who in the late 1910s and early 1920s was the regular director of Violet Hopson, first with his company Broadwest (1914-1921) and then for Hopson's own company.
Sources: IMDB, English Wikipedia, Anthony Slide in Encyclopedia of British Film, www.allmovie.com, www.hepworthfilm.org/alma_taylor.htm.
Truus, Bob & Jan too! posted a photo:
Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., no. 2113. Photo: Warner Bros.
Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990) was an American actress, model and dancer. She was a film and television star, known throughout her 60-year career as a consummate, versatile professional with a strong, realistic screen presence. By 1944, Stanwyck had become the highest-paid woman in the United States. She was a favourite of her directors, including Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang, and Frank Capra. After a short but notable career as a stage actress in the late 1920s, she made 85 films in 38 years in Hollywood before turning to television.
Barbara Stanwyck was born Ruby Catherine Stevens in 1907 in Brooklyn, New York. She was the daughter of Catherine Ann (McPhee) and Byron E. Stevens, a bricklayer. Her mother died when she was accidentally knocked off a trolley by a drunk. Her father abandoned his children in grief after the death of his wife. Her elder sister brought up Barbara and was partially raised in foster homes. Later, she went to work at the local telephone company, but she had the urge to enter show business. At seventeen, she went to work as a showgirl. In 1928, Barbara moved to Hollywood and proved to be an extremely versatile actress who could adapt to any role. Barbara was equally at home in all genres, from melodramas, such as Forbidden (Frank Capra, 1932) and Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937), to thrillers, such as Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944), also starring Fred MacMurray. She excelled in comedies such as Remember the Night (Mitchell Leisen, 1940) and The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941) and in Westerns, such as Union Pacific (Cecil B. DeMille, 1939).
Barbara Stanwyck was also well known for her TV roles as Victoria, the matriarch of the Barkley family in the Western series The Big Valley (1965). In 1983, she also played in the hit mini-series The Thorn Birds (1983), which did much to keep her in the public eye. She turned in an outstanding performance as Mary Carson. One of her last roles was in the hit drama series The Colbys (1985). She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress four times, for Stella Dallas (1937), Ball of Fire (1941), Double Indemnity (1944) and Sorry, Wrong Number (1948). For her television work, she won three Emmy Awards, for The Barbara Stanwyck Show (1961), The Big Valley (1966) and The Thorn Birds (1983). Her performance in The Thorn Birds also won her a Golden Globe. She received an Honorary Oscar at the 1982 Academy Award ceremony and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1986. She was also the recipient of honorary lifetime awards from the American Film Institute (1987), the Film Society of Lincoln Centre (1986), the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (1981) and the Screen Actors Guild (1967). Barbara Stanwyck died in 1990, leaving 93 films and a host of TV appearances as her legacy. She was married twice, to film actors Frank Fay (1928-1935) and Robert Taylor (1939-1952). Her son, Dion Anthony 'Tony' Fay (1932), was adopted. Frank Fay and Stanwyck's marriage and their experience in Hollywood later became the basis of the Hollywood film A Star is Born. Their stormy marriage finally ended after a drunken brawl, during which he tossed their adopted son, Dion, into the swimming pool. Despite rumours of affairs with Marlene Dietrich and Joan Crawford, Stanwyck wed Robert Taylor, who had gay rumours of his own to dispel. Their marriage started on a sour note when his possessive mother demanded he spend his wedding night with her rather than with Barbara. In 1957, Tony, her adopted son, was arrested for trying to sell lewd pictures while waiting to cash his unemployment check. When questioned by the press about his famous mother, he replied, "We don't speak". She saw him only a few times after his childhood.
Sources: Denny Jackson (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.
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Truus, Bob & Jan too! posted a photo:
Canadian postcard in the Artists of the Camera series by McKenzie & Marlow, Vancouver. Ruth Chatterton in Once a Lady (Guthrie McClintic, 1931). Collection: Marlene Pilaete.
On 5 June 2026, the new La Collectionneuse post at European Film Star Postcards will feature American stage and film actress Ruth Chatterton. She was at her most popular in the early to mid-1930s, and in the same era gained prominence as an aviator, one of the few female pilots in the United States at the time. In the late 1930s, Chatterton retired from film acting.
Truus, Bob & Jan too! posted a photo:
Vintage British postcard. Lubin, 1910s, No. 45. Photo by Gilbert & Bacon, Philadelphia, 1916.
Eleanor Caines (1870 or 1880-1913) was an American silent film actress. She spent most of her film career at the Lubin Film Company. According to IMDb, Eleanor Caines was born in 1870 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. In 1909, she began her film career at Lubin in the short comedy Blissville the Beautiful (1909) with George Reehm and Harry Myers. In the following years, she appeared in some 30 Lubin productions. Eleanor Caines died in 1913 in her hometown Philadelphia at the age of 43. The cause of her death was surgery after an accident. She was married to William Robson with whom she had a child, and till her death to Jack Le Faint.
Truus, Bob & Jan too! posted a photo:
German postcard from the book 'Leni Riefenstahl Five Lives' by Taschen, Köln, 2000. Photo: Leni Riefenstahl. Leni Riefenstahl as Junta in Das blaue Licht / The Blue Light (Leni Riefenstahl, 1932).
Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003) was the notorious director of Triumph des Willens (1935), a fascinating propaganda documentary about Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich, commissioned by the Nazi government. Before she started directing films, she worked as a dancer and, on-screen, became a star in the mountain films directed by Arnold Fanck.
Helene Bertha Amalie 'Leni' Riefenstahl was born in Berlin, German Empire, in 1902. Her family was Lutheran Protestant, and she had a brother, Heinz, who was killed on the Eastern Front in World War II. Her father, Alfred Theodor Paul Riefenstahl, owned a successful heating and ventilation company and wanted his daughter to follow him into the business world. Leni was athletic and, at the age of twelve, joined a gymnastics and swimming club. Without her father's knowledge, she enrolled in dance and ballet classes at the Grimm-Reiter Dance School in Berlin in 1918, where she quickly became a star pupil. Riefenstahl later also studied dance with Jutta Klamt, Eugenie Eduardova and Mary Wigman. She became well-known for her self-styled interpretive dancing skills. She travelled across Europe with Max Reinhardt in a show funded by Jewish producer Harry Sokal. She appeared with Wigman in the documentary Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit - Ein Film über moderne Körperkultur / The Way to Strength and Health: a film of modern body culture (Nicholas Kaufmann, Wilhelm Prager, 1925), an artefact of the Naturist fad that swept Germany at this time. Riefenstahl began to suffer foot injuries that led to knee surgery, which threatened her dance career. A poster for the mountain film Der Berg des Schicksals / The Mountain of Destiny (Arnold Fanck, 1924) inspired her to move into film acting. She got in touch with director Arnold Fanck, who was the pioneer of the mountain film genre. Riefenstahl persuaded Fanck to feature her in his next film, Der heilige Ber g/ The Holy Mountain (Arnold Fanck, 1926) with Luis Trenker and Frieda Richard. The film cost 1.5 million Reichsmarks to produce and was released during the 1926 Christmas season. Der heilige Berg / The Holy Mountain was popular in Berlin, where sold-out performances extended its premiere run for five weeks. The film was also screened in Britain, France and the US and was the first international success of its director. Between 1926 and 1931, Leni Riefenstahl starred in five successful films. First, she made Der Große Sprung / The Great Leap (Arnold Fanck, 1927) and Das Schicksal derer von Habsburg / Fate of the House of Habsburg (Rolf Raffé, 1928). The film that brought Riefenstahl into the limelight was Fanck's Die Weisse Hölle vom Piz Palü / The White Hell of Piz Palü (Arnold Fanck, G. W. Pabst, 1929) with Gustav Diessl. Her fame spread to countries outside Germany. Her next two films were Stürme über dem Mont Blanc / Storm Over Mont Blanc (Arnold Fanck, 1930) with Sepp Rist, and Der Weisse Rausch / The White Ecstasy (Arnold Fanck, 1931). From Arnold Fanck, she had learned acting, but also film editing techniques. His use of cinematic technique - filters, special film stock, slow motion - to endow magnificent natural scenery with dramatic stature - provided her with key elements of her towering visual style and fostered her technical skill. Leni Riefenstahl decided to try to produce and direct her own film. It was called Das Blaue Licht / The Blue Light (1932), co-written by Carl Mayer and Béla Balázs. In the film, Riefenstahl played an innocent peasant girl in the Tyrolean mountains who is hated and cast out by the villagers because they think she is diabolic. She is protected by a secret cave of blue crystals. With the blue light, she lures young men to their deaths. The film attracted the attention of Adolf Hitler, who saw talent in Riefenstahl and arranged a meeting. He believed Riefenstahl epitomised the perfect German female.
In 1933, Leni Riefenstahl appeared in the American-German co-productions SOS Eisberg (Arnold Fanck, 1933; German version) and SOS Iceberg (Tay Garnett, 1933; US version). The two versions were filmed simultaneously in English and German and produced and distributed by Universal Studios. Riefenstahl co-starred with Gustav Diessl and Ernst Udet in S.O.S. Eisberg, and with Gibson Gowland and Rod La Rocque in S.O.S. Iceberg. Her part in SOS Iceberg would be her only English-language role in film. Riefenstahl heard Nazi Party (NSDAP) leader Adolf Hitler speak at the Berlin Sportpalast in 1932, and by her own account, she was mesmerised by his talent as a public speaker. After meeting Hitler, Riefenstahl was offered the opportunity to direct Der Sieg des Glaubens / The Victory of Faith (1933), an hour-long propaganda film about the fifth Nuremberg Rally in 1933. Riefenstahl agreed to direct the movie. She and Hitler got on well, forming a friendly relationship. The propaganda film was funded entirely by the NSDAP. Impressed with Riefenstahl's work, Hitler asked her to film Triumph des Willens / Triumph of the Will (1935), a new propaganda film about the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg. More than 700,000 Nazi supporters attended the rally. The film contains excerpts from speeches given by Nazi leaders at the Congress, including Adolf Hitler, Rudolf Hess, and Julius Streicher, interspersed with footage of massed Sturmabteilung and Schutzstaffel troops and public reaction. Riefenstahl's techniques — such as moving cameras, aerial photography, the use of long-focus lenses to create a distorted perspective, and the revolutionary approach to the use of music and cinematography — made Triumph des Willens/Triumph of the Will a prominent example of propaganda in film history. Riefenstahl won several awards, not only in Germany but also in the United States, France, Sweden, and other countries. Despite allegedly vowing not to make any more films about the Nazi Party, Riefenstahl made the 28-minute Tag der Freiheit: Unsere Wehrmacht (Day of Freedom: Our Armed Forces (1935) about the German Army. Hitler then invited Riefenstahl to film the 1936 Summer Olympics scheduled to be held in Berlin. She visited Greece to take footage of the route of the inaugural torch relay and the games' original site at Olympia, where she was aided by Greek photographer Nelly's. This material became the two-part Olympia (Festival Of Nations / Festival Of Beauty) (1938), a hugely successful film which has since been widely noted for its technical and aesthetic achievements. Riefenstahl began work on the opera film Tiefland / Lowlands. On Hitler's direct order, the German government paid her seven million Reichsmarks in compensation. Sinti and Roma people from the Marzahn detention camp near Berlin were compelled to work as extras. Almost to the end of her life, despite overwhelming evidence that the concentration camp occupants had been forced to work on the film unpaid, Riefenstahl continued to maintain that all the film extras survived and that she had met several of them after the war. In October 1944, the production of Tiefland moved to Barrandov Studios in Prague for interior filming. Lavish sets made these shots some of the most costly of the film. The film was not edited and released until almost ten years later. Tiefland would be her last feature film.
In 1945, after the war, Leni Riefenstahl was arrested at her chalet in Kitzbühel in the Tyrol by US soldiers. Throughout 1945 to 1948, she was held in various Allied-controlled prison camps across Germany. She was also under house arrest for a period of time. She had never been a Nazi party member and was cleared of active involvement by a de-Nazification tribunal. She was declared a Mitläufer or fellow traveller, which disbarred her from ever seeking public office. During the 1950s and 1960s, she tried many times to make more films, but was met with resistance, public protests and sharp criticism. Triumph des Willens and her other work for the Nazis had significantly damaged her career and reputation. Despite her protests to the contrary, Riefenstahl was considered an intricate part of the Third Reich's propaganda machine. In the 1960s, Riefenstahl discovered Africa and reinvented herself as a still photographer. She published two photo books on the Nuba tribes, 'The Nuba' and 'The Nuba of Kau'. In 1968, she began a lifelong companionship with her cameraman Horst Kettner. She was 60, and he was 20. He assisted her with her photographs. She also photographed the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. In 1978, Riefenstahl published a book of her sub-aquatic photographs called 'Korallengärten' (Coral Gardens), followed by the 1990 book 'Wunder unter Wasser' (Wonder under Water). Riefenstahl also released the autobiography 'A Memoir' (1995). Leni Riefenstahl died of cancer in 2003 in Pöcking, Germany, at the age of 101. She was buried at Munich Waldfriedhof. Riefenstahl was married twice. From 1944 to 1947, she was married to Peter Jacob. Shortly before her death, she married her longtime companion, Horst Kettner. After Kettner died in 2016, Riefenstahl's former secretary Gisela Jahn became the sole heir of Riefenstahl's estate.
In 1993, Ray Müller made the documentary Die Macht der Bilder: Leni Riefenstahl / The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, for which he won an International Emmy Award. Müller lets the spirited 92-year-old woman speak without interrupting her too much. He observes and makes it clear that she has not the slightest regret about her collaboration with Hitler, but she does regret the fact that it so severely hampered her postwar career. In 2024, Andres Veiel made the documentary Riefenstahl, which does not pass explicit judgment either, but it does tear Riefenstahl’s own victim narrative to shreds.
Sources: Richard Falcon (The Guardian), Rainer Rother (Leni Riefenstahl: The Seduction of Genius), Berliner Woche (German), DW, Wikipedia and IMDb.
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Truus, Bob & Jan too! posted a photo:
Vintage British postcard, 1910s. Hepworth Picture Player. Photo by Lallie Charles.
British actress Chrissie White (1895-1989) was one of the most famous and popular stars of British silent cinema.
SHANGHAI, June 13 — Chinese actress Xin Zhilei said she was keen for new experiences and did not want to limit herself, as she helped kick off the Shanghai International Film Festival yesterday.
Xin, 40, became only the third Chinese woman to win best actress in Venice in September, her first major accolade in Europe after charming audiences at home.
She will be part of a festival jury for the first time in Shanghai and joked at a news conference that she had asked Doubao, a Chinese AI chatbot, how to prepare for the role.
“I want to try everything I haven’t experienced before,” she later told AFP, adding she doesn’t rule out stepping behind the camera in the future.
“I don’t want to limit myself, nor do I want to box myself into a specific type... Anything is possible.”
Her Venice success came for her role in The Sun Rises on Us All, in which her character tries to make amends with a former lover who was jailed for a crime she committed.
The film was widely praised for the convincing, nuanced chemistry between her and co-star Zhang Songwen.
Asked about the challenges faced by Chinese film makers, Xin said good work would “always find its audience”.
“I truly feel that, whether in film or any other industry, we’ve entered an era where what’s false is being stripped away and only the genuine remains,” she said.
“I believe we each have to bring 100 per cent sincerity to our professions and to the work we love — only then might we have a chance to move the audience.”
Desire and drive
Xin’s first international break came in 2016’s Crosscurrent, a mystical romance set along the Yangtze River.
She has also starred in Chinese blockbusters and popular television series — notably 2023’s Blossoms Shanghai, directed by Hong Kong cinema legend Wong Kar-wai.
“When I first watched Crosscurrent back in the day, I didn’t really understand it — even as an actress in it,” she said.
“But years later, when I revisited it, I felt it was a truly great film.”
Xin grew up in China’s far north, near the border with Russia, in a family that struggled financially.
As her success grew, she was labelled online as someone “who wears her ambition and desire right on her face”.
Xin talked in a 2018 speech about the guilt she still feels having refused to buy her paralysed father a computer in the early days of her career, because of the cost.
“I admit I have a desire for money — because I never want to feel that regret again,” she said then.
Asked how her drive had shaped her development as an actress, she said “every person has... their own journey”.
“The reason I am who I am is precisely because I’ve gone through what I’ve gone through. And that has its own purpose.” — AFP
Truus, Bob & Jan too! posted a photo:
Vintage British postcard, 1910s. Hepworth Picture Player. P.C., 3. NB IMDb does not list a Chrissie White film with the title The Winning Smile, so it may just be a tagline accentuating what we see.
British actress Chrissie White (1895-1989) was one of the most famous and popular stars of British silent cinema.
Blue-eyed and light-haired beauty Chrissie White was born Ada Constance White in Chiswick, London, on 23rd May 1895 – the year film was introduced by the Lumière brothers. She started her film career when joining the Hepworth company in 1907 as a 12-year-old girl. Under the name of ‘ Chrissie’ she became one of the first stars in British cinema, often performing in shorts by director Lewin Fitzhamon, in particular the Tilly comedies. When White was teamed with Alma Taylor, they became a popular comic duo as the naughty schoolgirls Tilly and Sally, who create havoc everywhere. The Tilly comedies were a popular series in the years 1910 and 1911. NB White supposedly rode to the studios on a bicycle in her early years as a star.
One by one, White moved from comedy to drama and romance. By 1912 Chrissie White had become Hepworth’s leading lady and the most popular British star of her time. In the same year she married Claude Witten, who also worked for Hepworth. One of her earliest features was a crime film set in the horse racing milieu: The Kissing Cup (1913); it still survives in the Dutch Desmet Collection, as well as the Tilly comedy Tilly in a Boarding House (1911). Other memorable titles were The Vicar of Wakefield (1913), and At the Foot of the Scaffold (1913). Chrissie White’s male partners in her films were mostly Lionelle Howard (from 1914 on); Stewart Rome (between 1914-1917), a.o. in Coward! (1915) and Her Boy (1915); and Henry Edwards (from 1918 on).
Edwards also directed most of their films together, such as Possession (1919), The City of Beautiful Nonsense (1919), The Kinsman (1919), The Bargain (1921) and Lily of the Alley (1923). All in all they did some 22 films together. They were also a couple in real life, as White married Edwards in 1922, and they had a daughter Henrietta, who also became an actress. Edwards and White became real celebrities in Britain, the equivalent of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. White's last silent film with Edwards was the romance The World of Wonderful Reality (1924).
When Hepworth collapsed in 1924, Chrissie White - who had worked only for Hepworth - retired from the screen, to the regret of her fans. She returned in the sound era to play in only two films more, with Edwards as her male partner: The Call of the Sea (Leslie Hiscott 1930) and the comedy General John Regan (Edwards 1933), filmed in Northern Ireland. After that White definitively retired from the screen, and after the death of Edwards in 1952 she withdrew from publicity at all. Estimates are that Chrissie White worked in between 100 and 180 films, shorts and features. Chrissie White died 18/8/1989 in Hollywood, California, and was buried at the Westwood Memorial Park.
Clips of Chrissie White's films can be traced in the BBC/BFI documentary Silent Britain (2006). See also on YouTube Tilly, the Tomboy, Gives to the Poor www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac1dVYaPN8I
Sources: IMDB, www.hepworthfilm.org/chrissie_white.htm. See also www.flickr.com/photos/truusbobjantoo/3023085296/
Truus, Bob & Jan too! posted a photo:
Poster freecard by Max Racks. Photo: 20th Century Fox. Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, Anne Bancroft and Robert De Niro in Great Expectations (Alfonso Cuarón, 1998). Caption: Let Desire Be Your Destiny.
American actress and businesswoman Gwyneth Paltrow (1972) is the daughter of filmmaker Bruce Paltrow and actress Blythe Danner. During the 1990s the 1990s and early 2000s, she was a leading lady in period films like Emma (1996) and Shakespeare in Love (1998). Later, she acted in blockbusters and franchises in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, from Iron Man (2008) to Avengers: Endgame (2019). On television, she had a recurring guest role in Glee (2010–2011). Paltrow won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award.
Gwyneth Katherine Paltrow was born in 1972 in Los Angeles, California. Her parents were director and television producer Bruce Paltrow and Tony Award-winning actress Blythe Danner. Her brother Jake Paltrow also works in the film industry. She is the niece of actress Katherine Moennig. Gwyneth grew up in Santa Monica, where she attended the Crossroads School. When she was eleven, the family moved to Massachusetts, where her father began working in summer stock productions in the Berkshires. At 15, she spent a year in Spain and speaks fairly good Spanish. She graduated from the all-girls Spence School in New York City and attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she studied art history. She dropped out of university to pursue acting. Earlier, she had demonstrated her talent by appearing in plays alongside her mother. She made her television debut in the drama High (1989), directed by her father. In 1990, Paltrow made her professional stage debut. She played her first film role in the musical Shout (Jeffrey Hornaday, 1991) alongside John Travolta. In the same year, she played the young Wendy in the fantasy film Hook (1991), directed by her godfather Steven Spielberg. She had minor roles in the thrillers Flesh and Bone (Sterve Kloves, 1993) and Malice (Harold Becker, 1993), alongside Nicole Kidman. Paltrow gained wider recognition with a supporting role in the thriller Se7en (David Fincher, 1995). She played a small but significant role as Brad Pitt’s wife. The two also began a relationship in real life, which received a great deal of media attention. The film was an international box-office hit. In the following year, she played Emma Woodhouse in Emma (Douglas McGrath, 1996), based on the novel by Jane Austen. For her role, she received positive reviews. Roger Ebert: "In its high spirits and wicked good humor, Emma is a delightful film–second only to Persuasion among the modern Austen movies, and funnier, if not so insightful. Gwyneth Paltrow sparkles in the title role as young Miss Woodhouse, who wants to play God in her own little patch of England. You can see her eyes working the room, speculating on whose lives she can improve." In 1998, she starred in five different films. Paltrow achieved her international breakthrough with the lead role of Viola De Lesseps in the romantic comedy Shakespeare in Love (John Madden, 1998). She played the fictional girlfriend of William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes). Shakespeare in Love won seven Oscars, including Best Actress for Paltrow. The film was a hit with both critics and cinema audiences, and she also received a Golden Globe for her performance. The British film Sliding Doors (Peter Howitt, 1998) was also successful, both with critics and the public. That year, she was the first woman to speak out about Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct. In 1999, she starred alongside Jude Law, Matt Damon and Cate Blanchett in the psychological thriller The Talented Mr Ripley (Anthony Minghella, 1999), based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith
Gwyneth Paltrow co-starred with her then-boyfriend Ben Affleck in the romantic film Bounce (Don Roos, 2000), which disappointed because of its predictable, formulaic plot. That year, she also starred in Duets (2000), directed by her father, Bruce Paltrow. In this karaoke comedy-drama, she did her own singing. She played the tragic poet Sylvia Plath in Sylvia (Christine Jeffs, 2003), in which she starred alongside her mother, Blythe Danner, for the first time. Roger Ebert: "The film stars Gwyneth Paltrow as Sylvia and Daniel Craig as Ted. They are well cast, not merely because they look something like the originals but because they sound like workers who live with words and value them; there’s a scene where they hurl quotations at each other, and it sounds like they know what they’re doing. Paltrow’s great feat is to underplay her character’s death wish. There was madness in Sylvia Plath, but of a sad, interior sort, and one of the film’s accomplishments is to show subtly how it was so difficult for Hughes to live with her. The movie doesn’t pump up the volume." Paltrow opted for more comedic roles. She was Margot Tenenbaum in the ensemble film The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson, 2001) and starred in the comedy Shallow Hal (Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly, 2001) alongside Jack Black. For her role, she had to wear a 200-pound latex 'fat' suit at times. Paltrow said that this experience made her saddened by the injustice faced by overweight people in society. She played the lead role in the unsuccessful comedy View from the Top (Bruno Barreto, 2003), for which she received a fee of US$10 million. Then she appeared alongside Jude Law in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (Kerry Conran, 2004). In 2006, Paltrow received another Golden Globe nomination for her remarkable performance in the drama The Proof (John Madden, 2005) as the loyal daughter of a brilliant but mad mathematician (Anthony Hopkins). In 2007, she played the lead role in The Good Night, directed by her brother Jake. In 2008, US Forbes Magazine listed her among Hollywood’s highest-paid actresses. Between June 2007 and June 2008, she earned $25 million, placing her in fourth place alongside Reese Witherspoon, behind Cameron Diaz, Keira Knightley and Jennifer Aniston. In 2008, Paltrow launched the website Goop, based on a newsletter featuring her personal lifestyle tips and an associated online shop selling related products. The fact that Paltrow advised her followers not to rely on information from doctors and the pharmaceutical industry, but to ‘do their own research’, drew criticism. Paltrow appeared as Pepper Potts in the action film Iron Man (Jon Favreau, 2008) alongside Robert Downey Jr. The film grossed over $500 million worldwide, and she reprised her role in the sequel, Iron Man 2 (Jon Favreau, 2010). In 2010, she was honoured with a star (no. 2427) on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. By 2019, Paltrow had played the role of Pepper Potts in five further productions from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In addition, she appeared in other feature films and played Holly Holliday in the television series Glee (2010, 2011 and 2014). In 2011, she won an Emmy for her appearance in Glee. In March 2011, Paltrow reached number 1 in the Australian charts with the song ‘Do You Wanna Touch Me? (Oh Yeah!)’ – a cover version of the song of the same name by Gary Glitter (1973). She scaled back her acting work in 2017 to focus on her lifestyle company, Goop, and other ventures. Following relationships with Brad Pitt (engaged from 1995 to 1997) and Ben Affleck (in a relationship from 1998 to 2000), Paltrow married Chris Martin, the lead singer of the British band Coldplay, in 2003. Their daughter, Apple Martin, was born in 2004, and their son, Moses Martin, was born in 2006. Paltrow and Martin divorced in 2016. In 2018, Gwyneth Paltrow married TV producer Brad Falchuk. They had met on the set of Glee. She is a board member of the Robin Hood Foundation, a charitable organisation dedicated to alleviating poverty in New York City. Recently, Paltrow appeared opposite Timothée Chalamet in Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie, 2025). She played Kay Stone, a wealthy, retired actress and socialite who has a sexual relationship with Marty. The film received critical acclaim and was a box-office success, grossing $192 million worldwide.
Sources: Roger Ebert, Wikipedia (German, Dutch and English) and IMDb.
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