CineSavant Column
Hello!
A quick note about the top image above, the one with the link. It’s a close-up of a 35mm film scrap I saved from a screening in 2000 — A.I.P. / Orion / MGM’s last print of Voyage to the End of the Universe was stored so badly, that when we tried to screen it, each reel disintegrated about halfway through, leaving a solid block of fused celluloid at the core. I afterwards helped the projectionist sweep the floor of crunchy film scraps. The photo above has been horizontally stretched — it’s a ‘scope picture so normally looks like this. ←
A huge assist from correspondent Ed Sullivan. At last Saturday’s CineSavant Column I asked who the ‘mystery actress’ was posing with Bud Westmore in the Universal Special Makeup Lab. I shouldn’t have been surprised when Ed solved the mystery.
Snooping around on Ebay, Ed found this sales post with a pub photo from the exact same shoot, identifying the starlet as Marianne Koch, the German actress best known for Sergio Leone’s Fistful of Dollars. Ms. Koch is still around, and her story is pretty inspiring — after her years as an actress she became a doctor.
What was the established European actress Marianne Koch doing at Universal-International in 1957? She was in two Universal releases that year, director Douglas Sirk’s Interlude with June Allyson & Rossano Brazzi (actually filmed in Germany), and also Jack Sher’s Four Girls in Town. In both she was billed as ‘Marianne Cook.’
The next year, director Sirk brought over Germany’s Lisolette Pulver to star in Universal’s A Time to Love and a Time to Die. She was billed as ‘Lilo Pulver,’ a name used again when she appeared in Billy Wilder’s One, Two, Three.
After last Saturday’s review of the Dennis Hopper / Vincent Price film Backtrack, friend and advisor ‘B’ sent along this note, with a link, showing me that Vincent Price was still acting after 1990. I’ll give ‘B’ the Last Word:
Glenn: Nice reviews today.
Vincent Price seems a bit out of it when speaking in Backtrack, although he does give Hopper’s camera a few good silent snarls and baleful looks. It is true that his part in Edward Scissorhands was shortened. I think his Inventor character does briefly speak, but perhaps not on camera. But VP did give one more short performance a few years later in which he retains at least a little of the old Price panache.
In The Heart of Justice, a 1993 TNT original drama, Price is seen briefly as a famous elderly gay author dining with … Dennis Hopper, playing another well known author. The two trade bon mots about life, some of them slightly amusing, for a minute or so. As Hopper gets up to leave the restaurant, he pauses to sweetly kiss Price on the forehead. If you wanna take a look at this, it’s at YouTube: The Heart of Justice.
Price’s scene with Hopper is at the very beginning; Price has a later, slightly longer scene with Eric Stoltz at about 57:40. The scenes are supposed to take place at the National Arts Club, but were shot elsewhere.
Anyway, VP looked okay (if fragile) in this. He remains greatly missed. — B.
Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson