I have heard this one as a Radio play which is available and seena Television version from 1982. It is a play I like.

This J B Priestley play is, in a way, not unlike ‘An Inspector Calls’ where a mysterious stranger comes into the lives of people staying at a small holiday cottage in Yorkshire.

Herbert Lom plays the stranger Dr Gortler who it seems has been sent on a mission to meet these people and influence the rest of their lives in a very dramatic way. There is a man, Walter Ormund and his wife Janet, who are unhappy in their lives , and another single man, Oliver Farrant, a teacher, who is travelling alone and it seems. pretty much alone in life.

ABOVE – Herbert Lom excellent as Dr Gortler

Dr Gortler has been sent to this cottage knowing that he will meet the three and also knowing the scenario – an unhappy marriage of two very decent people and a young man who is on his own.

The young man and Janet Ormund seem not to like one another and in fact do their very best to avoid meeting or being in the same room. This scene below is when Janet asks the teacher why he does not like her as he moves to leave the room. Gradually he opens up and says that, far from not liking her, he is actually drawn to her very forcefully and has been from the first time they met.

She admits that she feels – and has felt – the same and they rush to embrace.

They know that they must be together.

However they are worried about Walter and what he might do

Dr Gortler knows that in the scenario he has Walter would kill himself and leave the two lovers torn by guilt and struggling but he also is sure that he can change this.

ABOVE – Sam Shipley’s daughter Sally Pratt – who seeing what is happening is very concerned for her son who attends Walter Ormund’s school and she fears what would happen if the school closed due to this

ABOVE – Sam Shipley played by Leslie Sands

ABOVE Dr Gortler talks with Walter Ormund for some time and Walter decides not to stand in the way of the two lovers saying that his wife deserves the happiness he always wanted for her – and that there will be no scandal

Walter chats to the owner of the cottage and realises just how content he is. Played of course by Leslie Sands who we all well remember as ‘Cluff’ in the TV series.

Anthony Valentine is excellent as Walter Ormund. We probably remember him best for ‘Colditz’ but he was in so many productions in film and mainly Television.

Looking him up I see that he actually married in 1982 the year that he payed in this drama

In the last two weeks, I have watch the 2015 version of An Inspector Calls and this one had David Thewliss as the Inspector – and then yesterday my wife and I settled down to the 1954 version with Alistair Sim in the role.

The 2015 BBC production was very good as was the casting but I did think that David Thewliss’ acting was just a bit on the wooden side and this was a key role. The rest of the cast though we’re very good indeed.

On the other hand, Alistair Sim was wonderful in the earlier version

RE Guy Hamilton’s film version of J. B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls 1954 film is based on the 1945 stage play and is a mostly faithful adaptation. Gut Hamilton did a splendid job focusing on the family drama as it unfolds, although we, the audience – and the Birling family – don’t initially have any idea what is coming. It is 1912 and the wealthy and upper class Birling family are having a family celebration when the mysterious Inspector Poole arrives out of the blue to tell them the news of a young woman named Eva Smith (played by the lovely Jane Wenham) who has apparently died from poison that day in the infirmary. Alastair Sim, known mostly for comic roles and for his definitive Scrooge, plays Inspector Poole who, like someone peeling a banana, each time he carefully questions a member of the family, takes off a layer and draws them individually into revealing their involvement with the dead girl. As is soon revealed, the patriarch and matriarch of the Birlings (played by Arthur Young and Olga Lindo), their daughter Sheila (Eileen Moore), their alcoholic and rebellious son Bryan Forbes, qnd Sheila’s fiance played by Gerald Croft (Brian Worth), all had dealings with the young woman prior to her death. As the film goes on, Inspector Poole carefully and deliberately persuades each participant to tell his or her story about Eva. Eva has in her life been forced to use different names, so some of the family don’t at first respond to the name Eva Smith, but when another name is given – Daisy Renton, by the Inspector, there is a visible jolt for Gerald Croft – who instantly realises that he has been involved with her. What a story this is – first rate There is, on tour in the UK at the moment, a theatrical version which we had planned to see but events took over and we failed to make it

Well, I was brought up watching those sprawling Biblical Epics of the eerly to mid fifties – from ‘Samson and Delilah’ to ‘Ben Hur’ and later ‘Barabbas’ so going to see Gladiator 2 at the Lobethal Cinema in South Australia in January, I was pretty well prepared – but was this to be something New – maybe a New angle.

The way CHI is used these days – maybe over-used – we are certainly able to see things on a mega scale with fearsome animals fighting people in the arena and spectacular sea battles and invasions

However in terms of storyline and plot Gladiator 2 certainly borrowed from these older films – a deranged Caesar – similar but not in the same league as Peter Ustinov in ‘Quo Vadis’, classic fights in the arena, and so on.

A few new things were added – a Centurion riding a gigantic Rhino against the hapless victims and a ‘flooded’ arena with sharks – that certainly stretched believability but it was so well done.

Ridley Scott directed and at his age, he would well remember these ‘big’ films of the fifties – so I am quite sure that he was influenced by them

ABOVE – Gladiator 2

ABOVE – A sadistic and cruel Jack Palance in Barabbas.

Clearly deranged and totally mad, Peter Ustinov in ‘Quo Vadis’ seen here with Patricia Laffan who plays malicious Empress Poppaea, sardonic and disdainful in her delivery, at times running close to overshadowing even the great Peter Ustinov in his most famous role as Nero

Yes I see many similarities in the plot of Gladiator 2 to these classics. I have to say I didn’t enjoy it anything like as much – maybe I am just much older and not viewing through youthful eyes.

Her Life Story – or as of 7 August 1954 when he Picture Show article was published and I will go into this in a later article.

Meantime an interesting interview that she did

She was a great friend of Grace Kelly throughout her life -and here is a quite an interesting article that I came across

My friend, Grace Kelly – Rita Gam remembers an Old Hollywood icon

A good friend and bridesmaid talks about the Grace Kelly she knew – a smart and fearless businesswoman and “not a fashionista”

A style icon who favoured old sweaters, the Hollywood star-turned-princess was full of paradoxes, friend and fellow actress Rita Gam tells Nick Miller.

“They used to have stories. Today we don’t have stories as good as that,” says Rita Gam, 84-year-old star from Hollywood’s golden age, sitting upright and respectable in her New York apartment as she remembers past roles. “Even though some of them were B pictures they were terrific – nice stories, interesting.”

But I’m not there to hear that story. I’m there to talk to Gam about her close friend, Grace Kelly. We’re inside a 100-year-old block in midtown, with an ornate facade, a concierge and that old New York attitude, in an apartment decorated with movie posters from Hollywood’s prime.

I show her a book, Grace Kelly: Style Icon, published to accompany an exhibition curated by London’s V&A museum and soon to open in Bendigo.

“Oh, this is very Grace,” she says of the cover, from a 1955 Cosmopolitan shoot at the height of Kelly’s movie career.

But when she flicks through the pages, her eyes are drawn to a casual Kelly on the streets of Manhattan, the Empire State Building over her shoulder, her clothes smart but demure.

“That’s what she wore a lot,” Gam says. “Skirts and shirts. She was not much of a ‘lunch girl’, who would go to lunch and dress up.”

This is Grace Kelly: Style Icon (it says so on the cover). Adored by the public, sought-after by designers. Still the touchstone reference for the Oscars red carpet; the woman who bridged the golden age of movies and the modern era – the first modern celebrity, a Princess Diana-come-January Jones.

But talking to Gam, a more complex version of Kelly emerges. “She was not a fashionista in any way,” Gam insists. “You’ve got to separate what was created by the studio system, which was a make-believe image of a goddess.”

The Kelly that Gam knew exploited, then transcended – but never embodied – the public role that the Hollywood machine decreed for the leading ladies it owned.

Her life was a dance between image and reality, PR confections and real-life fairytales. Yes, she did marry a prince; but their first meeting was a contrived magazine publicity stunt. Yes, she was a fashion icon, but her private dress sense was conservative and her palace closets were packed with old sweaters.

Kelly and Gam met in New York in the early ’50s as hard-working young TV actors and models. Pittsburgh-born Gam was married to a young director, Sidney Lumet, and Grace was the daughter of a well-to-do Philadelphia family, determined to make her own life in the performing arts, and succeeding at it.

They met on the sound stage of a show called Danger. “She was playing some villainess or other – she was very cute,” Gam recalls. “We were introduced by Sidney.”

It was not a movie-star moment. “She was a very nice girl – she could have been a kindergarten teacher. She had scrubbed clean, sympathetic looks. It’s just when the camera hit her she became absolute magic.”

Gam and Kelly signed with MGM and became close friends when Gam moved to Los Angeles a year or so later. She had been put up at the Beverly Hills Hotel. “I was very uncomfortable [there],” she says. “I was a woman alone, and if I sat in the lobby I would get hit on, and I was lonely. I would be calling New York and Sidney all of the time.”

At the suggestion of her agent, she called Kelly, who was on the cusp of fame as Rear Window, her second movie with Alfred Hitchcock, was finishing filming. Kelly was lonely too, having left behind in New York her on-and-off paramour, European designer Oleg Cassini.

“I called Grace and she said, ‘Oh come for tea today’, which I did. She was living with Prudy Wise, her secretary, a girl from the south. It was just a one-bedroom Hollywood apartment in the Hollywood flats. I don’t know, we were just having tea and she said, ‘Well, why don’t you move in with us? Three is as good as two is as good as one.'”

“So we did, I moved into her flat and it was rather fun, it was like we were sorority girls.”

In those days, Hollywood was “a party town” and “pretty wide open”, Gam says, in suggestive but decorous tones. “We would get hit on by industry wolves.”

“I remember once, Grace had a little gold Chevrolet, a couple of years older than was current, and [an acquaintance] said, ‘Oh we’ll send a car for you’. His name was Charlie Feldman, he was a big agent, and I said, ‘Grace they’re going to send a car for us’. I was on the telephone, and she said: ‘No, tell them we’ll drive ourselves.’ I said: ‘Oh, OK.’

“Well of course she was smart, we were in control of our destiny. We left that ‘party’ of four – two gentlemen, Charlie and his South American friend – and drove safely home down the Hollywood hills. [Kelly] was really much more wise than I was.”

It’s a recurring theme as Gam remembers Kelly – a smart girl becoming a smart businesswoman who saw through the Hollywood machine and was fearless about imposing her own demands on it – in fashion as much as anything else.

“Basically, she was suburban in her tastes,” Gam remembers. “[Even as a princess] she had closets full of old tweed skirts, and many many blouses that had long since seen their day, and tonnes of sweaters that were well-washed and well-worn.

“She didn’t have any particular style sense, I don’t think. I think she addressed that as an actress. She didn’t read a lot about fashion. [She relied on] not friends but professionals.”

Kelly befriended and relied on the studios’ top designers. But she kept one eye on the result. In her first leading role (Dial M for Murder), even as she was learning how to act on film, she overruled Hitchcock on a costume decision, telling him that if her character got up in the middle of the night to answer the phone, she wouldn’t bother putting a big velvet robe over her nightgown. She also had a fight with the make-up man who she thought was putting too much rouge on her. “After that, I had his confidence as far as wardrobe was concerned, and he gave me a very great deal of liberty in what I wore in his next two pictures,” Kelly said.

If style means anything, it’s not what you wear, it’s how you wear it. “The subtlety of Grace’s sexuality – her elegant sexiness – appealed to me,” Hitchcock told his biographer. “Grace conveyed much more sex than the average movie sexpot. With Grace you had to find it out, you had to discover it. Everybody wants a new leading lady but there aren’t many of them around. There are a lot of leading women, but not enough leading ladies.”

Of their first meeting, Cassini later wrote: “I saw her only in profile. I saw the utter perfection of her nose, the long elegant neck, the silky diaphanous blonde hair. She wore a black velvet two-piece, very demure, with a full skirt and a little white Peter Pan collar.”

The Hollywood system marketed her as the antithesis of Marilyn Monroe, whom Fox had recently discovered, feeding magazines lines that drew Grace as the all-American dream, a fine but approachable noblewoman who men wanted but women would also want to be: respectable, white-gloved, fine-bred and pretty. When Marilyn Monroe was asked what she wore to bed she replied “Chanel No 5.” When Grace was asked, she replied: “I think it’s nobody’s business what I wear to bed.” Article after article punned on her first name.

Grace found it all amusing. But she told her biographer that this “respectable” image of Hollywood felt unreal, when the reality too often was “full of men and women whose lives were confused and full of pain. To outsiders it looked like a glamorous life, but really it was not.” After her Academy Award for best actress (tellingly, for her role in The Country Girl, in which she played “a woman who had been married 10 years and lost interest in clothes, herself, everything”) she turned down most of the roles she was offered. The pressure and grind of Hollywood left her exhausted and disillusioned.

But she was also setting the mould for the modern movie star, taking control of her own PR from the studio. For Photoplay magazine she invited a photographer to take unprecedented candid shots of her and her sister on holiday in the Caribbean, in casual clothes and away from the studio’s platoon of retouchers. The photographer Howell Conant wrote: “You trusted Grace’s beauty, you knew it wasn’t built from clothes and make-up … [it was] natural, unpretentious.”

And then came her prince. Paris Match magazine set up a photo shoot of her with Prince Rainier of Monaco, as a promotion for its Cannes coverage. Gam recalls that the dress Kelly wore for the occasion she considers her biggest fashion faux pas. “She would make jokes about it.”

Months later, Rainier arrived in New York. “She called me, and she said, ‘Come up for drinks on Thursday, I want you meet my prince.’ I thought she meant her newest boyfriend and indeed it was her prince,” Gam remembers. “When I first met him … I wasn’t blown over – you know, it wasn’t Clark Gable, he was just a nice guy. He wasn’t handsome, he was short and dumpy – [but] he was fun, he was well-educated, he had a good, funny British sense of humour, and he was intelligent, so I mean, what’s not to like?”

with Prince Rainier at their first meeting

“She was romantic, she would go with somebody for a long time and she was looking for the perfect person. And she fell in love with Rainier and that was that. She just allowed the romance of the times to sweep her away.”

This was the ultimate fairytale – the lavish royal wedding, the palace life in Monaco, dressed by designers.

And then there was the reality. More than 1600 reporters and photographers (more than covered World War II) turned the wedding into a mob scene. “After the honeymoon she [and] Rainier slept for two days. It was exhausting and it took [them] a long time to recover from it,” Gam, who was a bridesmaid, remembers.

“She didn’t have a clue [what she was in for],” says Gam of what followed for Kelly. The royal family forbade her from making any more films, which devastated Kelly. But Kelly was resourceful, playing the new role of princess in the same way as she had approached her movie career.

She switched from Hollywood’s designers to the cream of the European fashion houses, and took to the kind of roles that princesses perform – benefits and balls, and patron of the arts.

“I don’t think Grace changed from the minute I met her to the day she died,” Gam says. “She had an extraordinary PR sense and she had a strong sense of who she was and what she wanted to say. She allowed herself to be used by the talented fashion people of the time. And she enjoyed it. [But] I certainly don’t think of clothes [when I think of her]. I think of friendship, I think of a loyal good friend, and somebody with a lovely voice and lovely face.”

“You know, I see her very clearly, even though it’s 35-odd years since she’s gone.” (Kelly died in a car crash in 1982.) “She had a very strong presence … Everyone should have a friend like that.”

Grace Kelly encapsulated the latter part of Hollywood’s golden age. At least, that’s the legend, that’s what people say. “And well they should,” says Gam. After all, it’s a good story.

Margaret Rutherford with her husband in real life Stringer Davis

In ”Murder at the Gallop” (1963), ”Miss Marple” and ”Mr. Stringer” join forces to solve the mystery of Mrs. McGinty’s blackmail.

Miss Marple suspects the blackmail is tied to a ”1951 theatrical production” by the ”Cosgood Company” and identifies the ”Lord Chamberlain’s office” in London as the key to uncovering details about the play.

She sends Mr. Stringer to investigate its history, showcasing their resourceful teamwork. Together, they edge closer to exposing the blackmailer and solving the case.

Away from film land there was a very dark side to Margaret Rutherford’s early life: Her grandfather, the Rev Julius Benn, was murdered by his son William – Margaret’s father – who was then imprisoned in a mental diseases institution. Her mother changed the family name to Rutherford, before committing suicide herself. Margaret struggled all her life to overcome the weight of these horrors, which she tried to keep out of the media – not entirely successfully. She was brought up by an Aunt Bessie in Wimbledon, where there is a blue plaque to celebrate that detail. Two in fact, the other at Wimbledon High School, where she excelled at music, drama and elocution. On the school’s recommendation, Bessie funded acting lessons. Margaret was known at the school as shy Peggy Rutherford.

Tony Benn, who was a cousin, spoke of her as a genial companion and produced a photo for a BBC documentary of the two of them sitting in deck chairs on a beach. He said she was exactly the same on screen and off.

I did go to see Tony Benn when he toured in his one-man show – and asked him what was probably the only non-political question about Margaret Rutherford. He says that Yes – she was a dear old Aunt who he visited often in his growing up years

I never need much of excuse to feature Joan Rice

The pictures BELOW are taken from a very short promotional film shown over Christmas on Talking Pictures.

It was called ‘The Postman’ and featured David Tomlinson as a postman delivering letters and introducing very short clips of stars such as Phyllis Calvert, Harry Fowler, Joan Rice and others at Christmas 1952 wishing us cinema-goers Best Wishes for the New Year.

And what a year 1952 had been for Joan Rice.

The wonderful ‘The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men’ had been released here in March of that year – and in June she was offered the female lead opposite Burt Lancaster in ‘His Majesty O’Keefe’ to be filmed in Fiji later in the year.

She got engaged and then flew out to Fiji – returning in November of 1952. She then broke off her engagement and met David Green in late December and married him in February 1953.

The past two years for Joan Rice had been meteoric.

One thing that does please me – after Robin Hood she got this major part and travelled round the world to film it and the film – ‘His Majesty O Keefe’ – was ‘big’ and well known and very well received.

Richard Todd was particularly scathing in his comments about Joan Rice and her acting abilities in ‘Robin Hood’ – but he got his come uppance – his next film after ‘Robin Hood’ was ’24 Hours in a Woman’s Life’ and he even missed the Robin Hood premiere to be on location on that film.

It was a dud – whereas Joan Rice in ‘His Majesty O Keefe again hit the jackpot as it did so well on a World scale.

From

I am so sorry not to have posted many articles in December – in truth I have been unwell and lacked the zest that normally helps me along with this. When you are fully well, almost anything is possible but even one degree under removes the energy and the interest.

I hope to be back OK soon

An old Theatre advertisement from Peterborough. It wasn’t so much the headline act of Tessie O Shea AND the Billy Cotton Band that took my eye, although I can imagine that this show would have been really good. No it was the bottom forthcoming attraction – Donald Wolfit in ‘Treasure Island’ that drew me in.

I had never thought of Donald Wolfit as Long John Silver and I can’t think why because he would seem a perfect fit

I delved further and came across this programme which is dated 27 February 1950 for the Kings Theatre in Southsea.

This production must have been aimed at capitalising on the success of the Walt Disney film released at that time – and Donald Wolfit would have been well able to give a very similar performance to Robert Newton – another Shakespearean actor, one would imagine.

Interesting to see John Charles worth as Jim Hawkins – he is well remembered for his role in the BBC TV Billy Bunter series, and later for a film I like very much ‘The Blue Peter’ which came out a little later than this.

I think that the poor lad came to a very tragic end.

Looking down the cast list I can’t see anyone else that we would have known.

The Blue Peter was filmed mainly in Snowdonia and centred around an outward bound school. The young men in the film all seem to have been in the TV Billy Bunter series as pupils at Greyriars

The film itself was made in Tecnicolor and Cinemascope.

Keiron Moore and Harry Fowler – The Blue Peter 1955

The climax of the film came when one boy slips down a cliff and has to be rescued by another of them who himself is having to overcome a fear of heights due to  events in his childhood. The way his sequence was filmed was impressive on the wide screen as we, the audience, were looking down at the boy clinging to the sheer cliff face. I remember hardly daring to watch at the time and this sequence has certainly stuck with me.  If I ever think of this film I think of that shot –  looking down at the long drop to the valley below with the lad, arms outstretched, clinging to the rocks

Keiron Moore played one of the instructors and the female lead was Greta Gynt who by now was at the end of her film career. They were both quite good in the roles.

JOHN CHARLESWORTH

A young actor called John Charlesworth played the young man with the fear of heights who eventually comes good.  He had a busy career. He was in Scrooge with Alistair Sims, the Bunter series and many other film and TV appearances. Sadly he died in 1960 aged 24. There is scant biographical information available on John.

He was born John William Charlesworth on November 15th 1935 in Hull, Yorkshire, England.
He appeared in a large number of films during his young life. The most famous of these being the 1951 Alastair Sim vehicle ‘Scrooge’. Charlesworth played the role of Peter Cratchit.

On April 2nd 1960, John took his own life.  A very sad event for someone who seemed to have achieved such a lot in a short life.

Not so much a Western but more a riverboat adventure.

Patricia Medina seemed to have carved out a very good film career in Hollywood after she went there along with her then husband Richard Greene, He did OK there but achieved greater fame later on when he was back in England in ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’ the very famous Television series

Directed by William Castle
Starring Lex Barker, Patricia Medina, Warren Stevens, Craig Stevens, John Dehner, Mel Welles

Duel On The Mississippi (1955) is one of those Louisiana riverboat films, with plenty of riding and shooting’ – we get river pirates instead of outlaws or Indians.

Lex Barker had just finished with his Tarzan films – I always thought that leaving them proved a wrong turn for Lex – he was very popular as Tarzan and had done a good job in the role.

This film is set in Louisiana at the start of the 19th century and sugar is becoming a valuable commodity. The traditional plantation owners are trying to capitalise on the sugar crop but there are pirates around intent on stealing what they can.

The leader of these ruthless thieves is “Lili” (Patricia Medina) who, along with her dad “Jacques” (Ian Keith) and “Hugo” (Warren Stevens) has set her sights on the “Tulane” family.

She owns the debt on their land and is determined to force them into ruin. However a saving grace here is that “André” (Lex Barker) who is the son very much catches the eye of Patricia Medina.

The film has a solid story of greed and revenge

Patricia Medina must have been back and forth to England because she was in ‘The Black Knight’ with Alan Ladd – made at Pinewood Films Studios here in England in 1954

The Above is an earlier Picture from February 1949 – Richard Greene and his wife Patricia Medina pack before flying to the USA.

They  were actually divorced just over two years on from this picture being taken, and much later, in 1960, she married film actor Joseph Cotton, a marriage that lasted until he died. They were very much in love throughout their marriage and often toured the USA together in stage productions

Patricia Medina was much in demand in films in the early fifties.

I would imagine that she was a girl who could stick up for herself if necessary – she had self confidence and she was good

Lex Barker is really not well remembered outside of Tarzan. He did however make quite a lot of films in Europe

I have to admit that Kirk Douglas is NOT my favourite actor by any means but have to admit that he was in some good Westerns. He was good as Doc Holliday in ‘Gunfight at the OK Corral’ but nowhere as good as Victor Mature in the same role a decade earlier in ‘My Darling Clementine’

However when you look at Kirk Douglas’ life you have to admire how he was able to emerge from real poverty to achieve the success that he did in his very long life

He was the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, born Issur Danielovitch Demsky in Amsterdam, New York. He grew up poor, but was a fine student and gifted athlete. An acting scholarship got him into the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and he appeared in a few minor Broadway roles before joining the Navy in 1941.

He got a real break when he won the lead role in the 1946 picture The Strange Love Of Martha Ivers.

In the 1950s, as television took hold and this saw effectively the end of the Hollywood studio system.

Film stars began developing their own films, often backed by the studios. With the formation of Bryna Productions, Kirk Douglas was one of the first to set up shop. (Bryna was his mother’s first name.)

The Indian Fighter ABOVE

Backed by United Artists, Douglas opened a small Bryna office in Beverly Hills in 1955, with The Indian Fighter the company’s first release. I remember that he had personally picked out Elsa Martinelli as his co-star – she had little or no experience in films but she looked very beautiful. Apparently it is reported that it was Kirk’s wife who spotted her for the film

I remember seeing the film in the Cinema and it was in Wide Screen of course and terrific Technicolor. It looked so good.

Elsa Martinelli
(January 30, 1935 – July 8, 2017)

Elsa Martinelli was an Italian model and actress. She was “introduced” in The Indian Fighter (1955), which was produced by its star, Kirk Douglas, and directed by Andre de Toth.

Italian actress Elsa Martinelli, who starred opposite Kirk Douglas in the 1955 Western “The Indian Fighter” and went on to gain international recognition working with such directors as Mario Monicelli, Roger Vadim, Orson Welles, Howard Hawkes, and Elio Petri, died Saturday 8 July 2017 in Rome at the age of 82.

Born in the Tuscan city of Grosseto, Martinelli moved to Rome in the early 1950s and started a career as a model. She soon appeared in “Vogue” and “Life,” which is where she was noticed by Kirk Douglas’ wife, Anne Buydens.

Martinelli made her acting debut in 1954 in the Stendhal adaptation “Le Rouge et le Noir,” directed by France’s Claude Autant-Lara. But her breakthrough role came the following year in Andre de Toth’s “The Indian Fighter,” which Douglas produced.

Elsa Martinelli went on to alternating roles in European and U.S. productions,

Over the course of his career, Kirk Douglas made some fine Westerns. Howard Hawks’ The Big Sky in 1952. Man Without A Star in 1955. John Sturges’ Gunfight At The O.K. Corral from 1957, with Burt Lancaster as Wyatt Earp and Douglas as Doc Holliday — and its sister film, Last Train From Gun Hill. He appeared with Rock Hudson in The Last Sunset, directed by Robert Aldrich, in 1962. 

Lonely Are The Brave, a modern-day Western from 1962, is always named as Kirk’s favourite of his own movies.

This pictures dates back to May of 1976 – Very hot summer here as we all remember

Some big stars here – Seated Kathryn Grayson, Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Fred Astaire and Donald O Connor.

Standing: Marge Champion, Cyd Charisse and Johnny Weissmuller

The big-name stars from the golden days of the silver screen gathered in London on Sunday 16 May 1976 for the gala premiere of the film ” Thats Entertainment, Part 2, ” in which many of their most successful films are featured. Nostalgic group from the great days of Hollywood, pictured outside London’s Savoy Hotel

A much earlier photograph taken again at The Savoy Hotel BELOW :-

Sir Laurence looking nervous at the press introduction of Marilyn Monroe who is to star with him in ‘The Prince and The Showgirl’

She looks relaxed – she must have known that she was the star of this film – and the person who would guarantee Box Office results – He wouldn’t !!