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:

Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., no. 3236. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Publicity still for The King's Thief (Robert Z. Leonard, 1955).

Darkly handsome Edmund Purdom (1924–2009) was a British character actor who wore togas and sandals for a great deal of his career. In Hollywood, he replaced Marlon Brando in The Egyptian (1954) and Mario Lanza in The Student Prince (1954) and in Italy, he starred in countless Peplums and other genre films.

Edmund Anthony Cutlar Purdom was born in Welwyn Garden City, England, in 1924. His father was an artist and London drama critic Charles Benjamin Purdom. Jesuits educated Edmund at St Ignatius College and by Benedictines at Downside School. He began his acting career in 1945 by joining the Northampton Repertory Company, appearing in productions which included 'Romeo and Juliet' and Molière's 'The Imaginary Invalid'. It was followed by two years of military service, during which he joined the Army Pool of Artists. He made his screen debut in the BBC TV film Carissima (1950), followed by a BBC TV adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (Leonard Brett, 1951). He then joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon. In 1951-1952, Purdom was part of the company that Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh took to Broadway for alternating performances of Shakespeare's 'Antony and Cleopatra' and George Bernard Shaw's 'Caesar and Cleopatra'. He tested at Twentieth Century-Fox for the leading male role in My Cousin Rachel (1952), but Richard Burton got the part. The studio cast him instead as ship's officer Lightoller in Titanic (Jean Negulesco, 1953). His performance caught the attention of MGM, and he got a small role in the classic Julius Caesar (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1953) starring Marlon Brando. Purdome played Strato, the young servant of Brutus (James Mason), who holds the sword out for his master to run onto at the climax. Then he was cast in the title role opposite Jean Simmons in the epic The Egyptian (Michael Curtiz, 1954), 20th Century-Fox's most lavish production of the year. He played a brilliant physician in the service of the Pharaoh in 18th-dynasty Egypt. Ronald Bergan in The Guardian: “Purdom's reputation as a surrogate is underlined by the fact that he got his first chance of stardom when he replaced Marlon Brando in The Egyptian (1954) after Brando wisely cried off, preferring to play Napoleon in Desirée instead. (...) Purdom's striking dark good looks and dimpled cheeks made up for his rather wooden personality and inability to pronounce his 'r's, but not even Brando could have known how to react to dialogue such as: ‘You have bold eyes for the son of a cheesemaker.’”

Edmund Purdom then played the leading role opposite Ann Blyth in the MGM musical The Student Prince (1954), a part originally intended for Mario Lanza. According to Wikipedia, Lanza’s disagreement with director Curtis Bernhardt over how a certain song was to be sung led to his dismissal by MGM. (Ronald Bergan adds: “Mario Lanza's drugs-alcohol-weight problems got the better of him”) The film was subsequently directed by Richard Thorpe, and Purdom lip-synced to Lanza's singing voice. MGM gave the young unknown a considerable build-up. In the same year, he appeared in another MGM musical, Athena (Richard Thorpe, 1954), opposite Jane Powell and Debbie Reynolds. Tom Vallance cites in The Independent Debbie Reynolds saying, “The only relief on the set was the action going on off camera. Linda Christian, who was Mrs Tyrone Power at the time, was also in the picture. She was a temptress, and right before our eyes, we saw the tempted, who was Edmund Purdom. They would go to his little trailer, close the door and be gone for quite a while.” Christian later divorced Power and married Purdom. He then played the title role opposite superstar Lana Turner in the biblical epic The Prodigal (Richard Thorpe, 1955), MGM's most lavish production of 1955. It was a huge flop. He partnered with Ann Blyth again in the swashbuckling CinemaScope adventure film The King's Thief (Robert Z. Leonard, 1955). Purdom's MGM contract was terminated. On television, he starred as Marco del Monte in the swashbuckler series Sword of Freedom (Peter Cotes, Anthony Squire,1957-1958). In 1959, he filmed the crime drama Malaga / Moment of Danger (Laslo Benedek, 1960) in Europe. The American premiere of the film, co-starring Trevor Howard and Dorothy Dandridge, was delayed for nearly two years. After that, he did not work in Hollywood anymore except for some cameos, such as in the MGM production The Yellow Rolls-Royce (Anthony Asquith, 1964), in which peer Rex Harrison buys his wife (Jeanne Moreau) the titular limousine, unaware that she will be using the back seat to make love to Purdom.

When his Hollywood career sizzled out, Edmund Purdom went to Italy to star in the crime drama Agguato a Tangeri / Trapped in Tangiers (Riccardo Freda, 1957) with Geneviève Page. He decided to stay in Europe. In Italy, he made the Peplums (sword and sandal epic) Erode il grande / Herod the Great (Viktor Tourjansky, 1959) with Sylvia Lopez, I cosacchi / The Cossacks (Viktor Tourjansky, Giorgio Venturini, 1960) opposite John Drew Barrymore, and Salambò / The Loves of Salammbo (Sergio Grieco, 1960) featuring Jeanne Valérie. In France, he played Rasputin in Les nuits de Raspoutine / The Night They Killed Rasputin (Pierre Chenal, 1960) with Gianna Maria Canale. In Austria, he appeared in Das große Wunschkonzert / Big Request Concert (Arthur Maria Rabenalt, 1960) with Carlos Thompson and Linda Christian. In Great Britain, he played with Ian Hendry and Janette Scott in The Beauty Jungle (Val Guest, 1964) about the dangerous world of beauty contests. Another British film was the drama The Comedy Man (Alvin Rakoff, 1964) starring Kenneth More as a struggling actor. He lived in Rome for the rest of his life and continued to work extensively in Italian B-films and on television. His later films include the Spaghetti Western Crisantemi per un branco di carogne / Chrysanthemums for a Bunch of Swine (Sergio Pastore, 1968), the Horror film Thomas e gli indemoniati / Thomas and the Bewitched (Pupi Avati, 1970) and the thriller Giornata nera per l'ariete / Evil Fingers (Luigi Bazzoni, 1971) starring Franco Nero. He also worked as a voice actor. He dubbed dialogue translated from Italian into English for the sales of Italian films in English-speaking countries. During the 1970s and 1980s, he appeared in interesting films like the crime drama L'onorata famiglia / The honourable family (Tonino Ricci, 1974) with Raymond Pellegrin, the TV film Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (Mel Stuart, 1980) in which he convincingly played actor-writer-director Vittorio de Sica, and Don Bosco (Leandro Castellani, 1988) featuring Ben Gazzara. On TV, he was seen in The Scarlet and the Black (Jerry London, 1983) starring Gregory Peck, and the mini-series The Winds of War (Dan Curtis, 1983) starring Robert Mitchum. In 1984, he directed the Horror mystery Don't Open 'Til Christmas, about a psychopath who slaughters Santas. Purdom also played the leading role of a police inspector. It would be his first and last film direction. He was also very active as a sound engineer for music, recording many classical concerts in Florence and Vienna, and he devised a technique for transferring mono (sound) to stereo. He narrated popular short Christian documentaries on the life of Padre Pio and the 7 Signs of Christ's Return. His final film was the adventure film I cavalieri che fecero l'impresa / The Knights of the Quest (Pupi Avati, 2001) starring Raul Bova. Purdom was married four times. His first three wives, all divorced, were actress and ex-ballerina Tita Phillips (1951-1956), the mother of his children; Alicia Darr (1957-1958); and actress Linda Christian (1962-1963). In 2000, he married his fourth wife, the photographer Vivienne Purdom. Edmund Purdom died from heart failure in 2009 in Rome. He was 89. His daughter, Lilan Purdom, worked as a journalist for the French television channel TF1.

Sources: Ronald Bergan (The Guardian), Tom Vallance (The Independent), Wikipedia and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.