The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight is the Must see movie of the 2008 summer blockbuster season. It is at theaters now:

Kermit Love dies at 91

Kermit Love, the costume designer who helped puppeteer Jim Henson create Big Bird and other "Sesame Street" characters, has died. He was 91.

Love died from congestive heart failure Saturday in Poughkeepsie, near his home in Stanfordville, Love's longtime partner, Christopher Lyall, told The New York Times.

In addition to his work with Henson, Love was a designer for some of ballet's most prominent choreographers, including Twyla Tharp, Agnes de Mille, Jerome Robbins and George Balanchine

Love also designed costumes and puppets for film and advertising, including the Snuggle bear from the fabric softener commercials.

"Sesame Street," public television's groundbreaking effort to use TV to teach preschoolers, premiered in 1969. Henson designed the original sketches of Big Bird, and Love then built the 8-foot, 2-inch yellow-feathered costume.

It was Love's idea to add a few feathers designed to fall off, to create a more realistic feel.

"The most important thing about puppets is that they must project their imagination, and then the audience must open their eyes and imagine," he told The New York Times in 1981.

Looked like Santa, acted like the Grinch


Love also helped design costumes and puppets for Mr. Snuffleupagus, Oscar the Grouch and Cookie Monster, among other characters. He even appeared on the show himself as Willy, the fantasy neighborhood's resident hot dog vendor.

But Love always insisted Henson's famous frog wasn't named for him, according to The New York Times.

Caroll Spinney, who has played Big Bird since "Sesame Street" began, said he knew Love was gravely ill but didn't know he'd died until Tuesday.

Kermit Love"Kermit was definitely a totally unique person," 74-year-old Spinney said. "He looked very much like Santa Claus but was a little bit more like the Grinch."

In addition to designing the Big Bird costume, he added, "Kermit really helped me with dramatic coaching, and he was wonderful at that."

Born in 1916, Love began making puppets for a federal Works Progress Administration theater in 1935. He also designed costumes for Orson Welles' Mercury Theater. From there he began working with the New York City Ballet's costumer.

In his 2003 book, "The Wisdom of Big Bird (and the Dark Genius of Oscar the Grouch): Lessons From a Life in Feathers," Spinney recalled that after a year on "Sesame Street," he felt he couldn't live in New York on his salary.

Love told him to give it a month; the next week, Big Bird was on the cover of Time magazine and Spinney couldn't imagine leaving.

Happy Independence Day!

James Cagney film "Yankee Doodle Dandy"

James Cagney deserved the oscar he won for his role in this film. He went from playing gangsters in film for over a decade, to this. He put his whole heart into it.

To help you prepare for the 4th of July holiday season, here's famous Hollywood chef and all-around good guy GENE KELLY with a few of his favorite cooking tips, including "brush corn with Durkee's Homogenized Margarine", "sprinkle deviled eggs with Durkee's Paprika", and to be supreme, your potato salad must include Durkee's Famous Sauce, Durkee's Mayonnaise, Durkee's Whipped Salad Dressing, Durkee's Onion Salt, Durkee's Celery Seed, and... ummmm.... Well, apparently, no potatoes. Also, be sure to fold your Durkee's Napkins crisply, and use a genuine Durkee's Big-Ass Wooden Spoon for proper mixing and serving.

Hollywood's last great dancer, Cyd Charisse dead at 86

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Cyd Charisse, the long-legged Texas beauty who danced with the Ballet Russe as a teenager and starred in MGM musicals with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, died Tuesday. She was 86.
Cyd Charisse at a gala honoring fashion icon Fred Hayman on May 28, 2007 in Los Angeles, California.

Charisse was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Monday after suffering an apparent heart attack, said her publicist, Gene Schwam.

She appeared in dramatic films, but her fame came from the Technicolor musicals of the 1940s and 1950s.

Classically trained, she could dance anything, from a pas de deux in 1946's "Ziegfeld Follies" to the lowdown Mickey Spillane satire of 1956's "The Band Wagon" (with Astaire).

She also forged a popular song-and-dance partnership on television and in nightclub appearances with her husband, singer Tony Martin.

Her height was 5 feet, 6 inches, but in high heels and full-length stockings, she seemed serenely tall, and she moved with extraordinary grace. Her flawless beauty and jet-black hair contributed to an aura of perfection that Astaire described in his 1959 memoir, "Steps in Time," as "beautiful dynamite."

Charisse arrived at MGM as the studio was establishing itself as the king of musicals. Three producers -- Arthur Freed, Joe Pasternak and Jack Cummings -- headed units that drew from the greatest collection of musical talent. Dancers, singers, directors, choreographers, composers, conductors and a symphony-size orchestra were under contract and available. The contract list also included the screen's two greatest male dancers: Astaire and Kelly.

Astaire, who danced with her in "The Band Wagon" and "Silk Stockings," said of Charisse in a 1983 interview: "She wasn't a tap dancer, she's just beautiful, trained, very strong in whatever we did. When we were dancing, we didn't know what time it was."

She first gained notice as a member of the famed Ballet Russe, and got her start in Hollywood when star David Lichine was hired by Columbia Pictures for a ballet sequence in a 1943 Don Ameche-Janet Blair musical, "Something to Shout About."

Although that film failed to live up to its title, its ballet sequence attracted wide notice, and Charisse (then billed as Lily Norwood) began receiving movie offers.

"I had just done that number with David as a favor to him," she said in "The Two of Us," her 1976 double autobiography with Martin. "Honestly, the idea of working movies had never once entered my head. I was a dancer, not an actress. I had no delusions about myself. I couldn't act -- I had never acted. So how could I be a movie star?"

She overcame her doubts and signed a seven-year contract at MGM. She also got a new name, the exotic "Cyd" instead of her lifelong nickname Sid, to go with her first husband's last name.

The 1952 classic "Singin' in the Rain" marked a breakthrough.

When Freed was dissatisfied with another dancer who had been cast, Charisse inherited the role and danced with Kelly in the "Broadway Melody" number that climaxed the movie. She stunned critics and audiences with her 25-foot Chinese silk scarf that floated in the air with the aid of a wind machine.

Charisse also danced with Kelly in "Brigadoon," "It's Always Fair Weather" and "Invitation to the Dance." She missed what might have been her greatest opportunity: to appear with Kelly in the 1951 Academy Award winner, "An American in Paris." She was pregnant, and Leslie Caron was cast in the role.

In 1996, Charisse recalled her reaction on entering the movies: "Ballet is a closed world and very rigid; MGM was a fairyland. You'd walk down the lot, seeing all these fabulous movies being made with the greatest talent in the world sitting there. It was a dream to walk through that lot."

Her first assignment was a "Ziegfeld Follies" sequence in which she was one of the female dancers "flitting around Astaire as he danced."

Like most young MGM contract players, she was schooled in drama and voice, and diction lessons eliminated her Texas accent. The singing lessons didn't take, however, and the songs in her musicals were dubbed.

She graduated to featured dancer in sequences for such films as "Till the Clouds Roll By," "Fiesta," "On an Island with You" and "Words and Music." She also appeared in such dramatic films as "East Side, West Side," "Tension" and "Mark of the Renegade."

"Silk Stockings" in 1957 marked the end of her dancing career in films, as well as the twilight of the movie musical. With the film business suffering from the onslaught of television, MGM dismantled its great collection of talent. Musicals were too expensive, and foreign audiences had soured on them.

Charisse continued with dramatic films, several of them made in Europe. She and Martin took their musical act to Las Vegas and elsewhere. In 1992 she finally made her Broadway debut, taking over the starring role as the unhappy ballerina in the musicalized "Grand Hotel." The musical had premiered in 1989 with Liliane Montevecchi in the role.

"I've done about everything in show business except to play on Broadway," Charisse said in a 1992 Associated Press interview. "I always hoped that I would one day. It's the World Series of show business. If anybody tells you they're not intimidated, they're lying."

In 1974, Charisse returned to MGM for a TV drama. Gazing over the half-filled commissary at lunchtime, she mused: "You never realize that good things are going to be over sometime. It all seemed so natural then: Clark Gable and Robert Taylor lunching at one table. Lana Turner would be lunching at a table in the corner. Ava Gardner, too.

"I grew up at this studio, and it didn't seem unusual to see all those stars. Nowadays, you'd never find so many names in one commissary. In fact, there aren't that many stars."

Her name was Tula Ellice Finklea when she was born in Amarillo, Texas, on March 8, 1922. From her earliest years she was called Sid, because her older brother couldn't say "sister." She was a sickly girl who started dancing lessons to build up her strength after a bout with polio.

"I was so frail they were afraid to touch me," she recalled in that 1996 interview.

At 14 she auditioned for the head of the famed Ballet Russe, and became part of the corps de ballet and toured the U.S. and Europe. To appear with the nearly all-Russian company, she was first billed as Celia Siderova, than as Maria Istromena.

At one point during the European tour, she met up again with Nico Charisse, a handsome young dancer she had studied with for a time in Los Angeles. They married in Paris in 1939.

The Ballet Russe disbanded after the war broke out, and the newlyweds returned to Hollywood. In 1942, a son, Nicky, was born.

In 1948, the year after she and Nico divorced, Charisse married Martin. Her second son, Tony Jr., was born in 1950.

Here is Gene Kelly & Cyd Charisse - from Singin' in the Rain:

All Time High: 'Octopussy' Celebrates 25 Years

Octopussy, the film marketed as James Bond’s all time high, celebrates its 25th anniversary this month. Debuting at London’s Odeon Leicester Square on Monday, 6 June 1983, Roger Moore’s penultimate 007 adventure featured a little bit of everything including the return of a Bond girl, exotic locations in India, Tarzan yells, clown suits and more.

Opening in the US a few days later on the 10th of June, Octopussy eventually proved to be another winner for the Bond series at the box office. With a final worldwide gross of $183.7 million dollars, it took the top spot in the famous ‘battle of the Bonds’ with Sean Connery’s unofficial Never Say Never Again, released later that year.

Happy Birthday Judy!

In 1922 singer-actress Judy Garland was born Frances Gumm in Grand Rapids, Minn.
We plan to feature Judy Garland in an upcoming story on this blog. Stay Tuned for more information on this great actress.

New Bond Movie Coming!