Celluloid and the City

She was labelled ‘The Hedy Lamarr of Santa Monica’, but the fame and fortune provided no comfort.

The Beginning

Gail Russell’s ethereal beauty lends an already otherworldly quality to The Uninvited (1944). From the moment she appears on screen, her portrayal of Stella Meredith is quietly mesmerising. Her large, expressive eyes captivate Ray Milland’s Rick Fitzgerald, yet she proves just as compelling to his sister Pamela, played by Ruth Hussey, who seems instinctively protective of the fragile young woman.

It was this very vulnerability — so effective on screen — that defined Russell’s life away from the camera. Beneath the luminous surface was a painfully shy and sensitive soul, ill-equipped for the demands of Hollywood. The qualities that made her unforgettable as Stella Meredith would also contribute to a life marked by anxiety, self-doubt, and ultimately tragedy.

Russell had originally hoped to become a commercial artist. She was as creative as she was beautiful, preferring pencils and paint to the spotlight. Her mother, Gladys, however, envisioned a different future. The family relocated from Chicago to Los Angeles, and Gail soon found herself under contract at Paramount Pictures. Even at just 18, studio acting coaches were required to coax performances from the deeply introverted young actress.

Arriving in Hollywood and The Uninvited

Russell made her film debut in Henry Aldrich Gets Glamour (1943) and appeared briefly in Lady in the Dark the same year. It was The Uninvited in 1944, however, that announced her as a rising star. Ironically, it was also the point at which her sensitivity collided most painfully with the realities of studio filmmaking.

Frequently overwhelmed on set, Russell was often reduced to tears. With little understanding of the technical demands of film acting, she relied heavily on the patience and kindness of those around her. Ray Milland, cast as her romantic lead, regularly took her aside to rehearse lines, as she struggled to memorise dialogue. For a young actress under intense pressure, the experience was deeply distressing.

It was during this period that Russell turned to alcohol for comfort — a coping mechanism that would follow her for the rest of her life.

Problems Begin

The Uninvited was a major success, and Paramount quickly positioned Russell as its next young star. Roles followed in quick succession: Our Hearts Were Young and Gay (1944), Salty O’Rourke opposite Alan Ladd (1945), and Our Hearts Were Growing Up (1946) with Diana Lynn. Each film kept her firmly in the public eye, even as her private struggles intensified.

In 1947, Russell was loaned to Republic Pictures for Angel and the Badman, produced by and starring John Wayne. Wayne recognised her vulnerability and reportedly took on a protective, almost paternal role on set, ensuring she was not overwhelmed by the production.

According to several accounts, Russell developed feelings for Wayne, which he handled with sensitivity and restraint. Years later, she reflected on her crippling self-consciousness, describing an almost paralysing anxiety in social situations — a constant tightening knot that made everyday interactions feel unbearable.

Marriage and Decline

In August 1949, Russell married actor Guy Madison. The marriage, however, was short-lived. By 1953 the couple had separated, and Russell’s dependence on alcohol had worsened significantly. That same year, she was arrested for drink-driving and charged with drunkenness in 1954.

Her courtroom remarks reflected the disarray of her life: confused, defensive, and painfully exposed. Hollywood’s promising ingénue was slipping through the cracks.

The Revenge of Mrs Wayne

Further scandal followed in 1953 when John Wayne’s wife, Esperanza Baur, filed for divorce and named Russell in the proceedings. Baur alleged that Russell had spent the night with Wayne and had been given a car in exchange for “services rendered.” The accusations added another layer of public scrutiny to an already fragile existence.

Conquering Her Demons?

In the mid-1950s, Russell made a determined attempt at recovery and professional redemption. She returned to the screen in Seven Men from Now (1956) opposite Randolph Scott, earning praise for her restrained and compelling performance. Many hoped it signalled a turning point.

She followed this with a role in the noir The Tattered Dress (1957), co-starring Jeff Chandler. Biographer Dana M. Reemes later noted that the production allowed for considerable creative freedom, and Russell’s work suggested an actress of real depth still fighting to be heard.

The End

Sadly, this hopeful chapter proved fleeting. Though she experienced periods of sobriety, alcohol remained a persistent presence, accompanied by recurring legal and personal troubles.

On 26 August 1961, Gail Russell was found dead in her Brentwood home. Neighbours, concerned after not seeing her for several days, alerted authorities. She was just 36 years old. The cause of death was listed as aspiration of stomach contents, with malnutrition cited as a contributing factor. The demons she had battled for so long had finally won.

In Memoriam

Gail Russell possessed rare beauty and undeniable talent, yet could never fully reconcile her delicate psyche with the relentless demands of fame. Her final film, The Silent Call (1961), marked a quiet farewell to a career filled with both promise and pain.

Rita, reading

Churchill followed up the success of ‘Royal Wedding’ with appearances on television, radio and the stage on both sides of the Atlantic. Whilst appearing in ‘As You Like It’ on stage in Croydon in 1961, her father gave the play his seal of approval, sitting proudly in the front row and promptly falling asleep.

Sarah’s issues with alcohol had already been noted in the 1950s, with several arrests and a spell in Holloway Prison. Questionable marriages had been met with disapproval from her parents. Only her third marriage, to Thomas, Lord Audley, was greeted with approval (and perhaps a touch of relief).

Sarah Churchill passed away in 1982, at the age of 67.

When Constance Smith won a beauty contest aged 16 in Dublin, and left to join the Rank Organisation, the world was at her feet.

She was soon offered a contract by 20th Century Fox, with the 1950s shaping up to be her decade. She married the actor/future director Bryan Forbes in 1955 and things were looking rosy.

Then it was almost like the demons she kept at bay all emerged at once. Drugs and alcohol marred her performances. Her marriage ended in divorce in 1955. She had a turbulent relationship with her next partner, being sentenced to three months in prison for stabbing him, and then having another go and being charged with attempted murder. There were several suicide attempts. She made her last picture in 1959. She spent the next few decades in and out of hospitals before passing away in 2003 at the age of 74.

During filming for ‘All About Eve’, Zsa Zsa Gabor, George Sanders’s then wife, tired of Marilyn Monroe batting her eyelashes at Sanders, said to her husband ‘don’t flatter yourself, she’s having sex with everybody.’

Once labelled a “video nasty” in the UK, Andrzej Żuławski’s cult masterpiece is now back in circulation and finding new audiences. Sam Neill has described it as the most extreme film he has ever made. Isabelle Adjani won Best Actress at Cannes for her raw, almost unbearably intense performance — a role so punishing it reportedly led to a breakdown once filming ended. And yet, despite its reputation, Possession is only now receiving the kind of wide exposure it always deserved.

This is not a film for everyone. There were moments during my own viewing where I genuinely questioned whether I could see it through — and I’m no stranger to difficult cinema. But perseverance is rewarded. Possession may batter you, confuse you, and repel you, but it leaves a mark few films can rival.

It’s impossible to discuss Possession without anchoring it firmly in its time and location. A French–West German co-production, the film was shot in Berlin while the Wall still loomed large — both physically and psychologically. That Cold War unease permeates every frame.

Marketed as a “psychological horror drama,” Possession unfolds in a world stripped of warmth or aspiration. Mark (Sam Neill), a spy, returns from a mysterious assignment to find his marriage to Anna (Isabelle Adjani) collapsing. Their apartment is sparse, cold, barely inhabitable — a reflection of their emotional desolation. Anna wants a divorce and has begun seeing another man, Heinrich. Mark, emotionally ill-equipped to deal with abandonment, spirals rapidly.

From here, the film abandons anything resembling narrative comfort. Linear storytelling dissolves. Emotional logic gives way to hysteria, obsession, and violence. What begins as marital breakdown soon mutates into something far stranger — something that resists interpretation even as it demands engagement.

Neill delivers a ferocious performance, his grief and rage erupting in scenes of near-uncontrolled intensity. Adjani is pushed even further, her physicality and emotional exposure almost confrontational. Violence is shown without cushioning, and the viewer’s comfort is treated as entirely irrelevant. Possession doesn’t care if it is liked — only that it provokes thought, reaction, and disturbance.

This is Żuławski’s only English-language film, and it bears all the hallmarks of his uncompromising art-house sensibility. Neill later described the director as “handsome, charismatic, and wild,” adding that his methods would likely not be tolerated in modern filmmaking.

One infamous moment illustrates this perfectly. Neill recalled being instructed to slap Adjani during filming — an instruction he initially refused outright. Only after Adjani herself insisted did he comply, later describing it as the most distressing thing he had ever done on screen. It’s an anecdote that encapsulates both the extremity of the production and the intensity captured on film.

Critical interpretations of Possession are almost as fractured as the film itself. It has been compared to Polanski’s Repulsion and Cronenberg’s The Brood in its depiction of psychological collapse. Some view it as a metaphor for the devastation of divorce — Mark only recognising Anna’s loneliness once it begins to wound him. Others point to the doppelgänger motif: Adjani appears as both Anna and Bob’s serene schoolteacher, suggesting idealised alternatives to unbearable reality.

These readings coexist rather than resolve. Żuławski offers no roadmap, no comforting allegory. Meaning must be wrestled from the chaos.

In the conservative climate of early-1980s Britain, Possession stood little chance. It was banned outright as a “video nasty” due to its intense and disturbing content. Predictably, this only amplified its legend.

Miriam Hopkins was a relative newcomer when she was cast as a judge’s wayward granddaughter in ‘The Story of Temple Drake’ (1933). Far from loving the frivolous roles that would best fit her bubbly blondness, Hopkins was delighted to be cast as Temple. Said Hopkins ‘"That Temple Drake, now, there was a thing. Just give me a nice un-standardized wretch like Temple three times a year! Give me the complex ladies, and I'll interpret the daylights out of them."

She certainly got drama in that role. The film was based on the controversial novel ‘Sanctuary’ by William Faulkner, which was a tale of depravity - kidnap, rape and drug abuse, and could have been considered by some as unfilmable. Of course the film couldn’t show everything that the book did, the Hay’s Office were down on it like a ton of bricks, and it has been said that Temple Drake was the film that broke the censor’s back. From thereon in, censorship was going to come down hard and fast, slaying anything that landed in their path that didn’t toe the censor’s line, artistry be damned.

Today ‘The Story of Temple Drake’ holds up well. It’s atmospheric and daring, and Hopkins is luminous, even when at her lowest. The Criterion Collection launched it on blu-ray and dvd for the first time in 2019.

Shakespeare's 'Scottish Play' hit cinema screens in all its gory glory 1971. But was the world ready for Polanski's bloody vision?

Hazy dawn light. An overcast sky, gradually, but only slightly, brightening to reveal three shuffling forms coming into view. Two old dames. One young. Our three witches, bearing a severed arm. Committing it to the ground with blood and spit Polanski has set his scene. A Macbeth like no other

A box office bomb on its release, Roman Polanski’s 1971 adaptation of William Shakespeare’s classic tragedy Macbeth has deservedly undergone a reappraisal in recent years. It came to fruition in what some would now call a simpler time. Relatively recent, but still a world away from the times we’re living in now, where all vices are catered to within a click of a button. As aware as we were of the darkness of the ‘Scottish Play’, audiences of the early 1970s were not ready for it to be as dark as Polanski made it.

His Scotland is a bleak and weather-battered hell. Macbeth (a never-better Jon Finch) is mired in the mud and blood of the battlefield from the start - a Norwegian/Irish attempt to take the land by force has been suppressed by the brave and honourable Macbeth. Stark shots of a gallows, complete with writhing bodies, are some of the first we see. The traitorous Thane of Cawdor has, unknown by Macbeth, been relieved of his title, and will soon be executed. Our Macbeth and his close friend Banquo (Martin Shaw) are riding away from the battle when they happen upon the three sisters we have already met but they are seeing for the first time. Their proclamations of Macbeth’s greatness astound both men, but it comes to pass that they had correctly seen the future - Macbeth is named Thane of Cawdor. This sets in motion a frantic unravelling of a man who was only just coming into his greatness, but who is unable to cast off a base nature, in pursuit of a throne soaked in blood.

The film was equally cursed and blessed by the benevolence of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Productions, who funded the movie when Paramount, Universal and MGM passed. This was apparently an attempt by Hefner to turn his hand to high art. While the source of funding was less than ideal, I guess we have to appreciate that without Hefner’s funding, the film simply wouldn’t have been made. But Hefner’s involvement ensured that, on release, much bad press was focused on the film’s ‘nudity and graphic violence’. Maybe no member of the press pack was aware that the source play is a bloodbath in itself. British renowned theatre critic Kenneth Tynan co-wrote the screenplay with Polanski - Polanski being impressed with Tynan’s knowledge of Shakespeare’s work, and Tynan being impressed with Polanski’s vision for the play. Polanski had wanted to work on a Shakespeare film way back when he was a student in Poland and seemed to find a soulmate within the creative process who was as gutsy he was in the adaptation.

From the start, the project was beset by production issues, with the British weather, and even more so by the petulance of its director. Polanski at this point in his career was highly marketable, with the successes of Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby under his belt. Which in no way helped mitigate his highly demanding behaviour on set. At one point financiers insisted that he be fired, not least because the film was over-budget, requiring both Polanski and Hefner to top up the pot and get the thing completed.

Jon Finch with Roman Polanski behind the scenes

When Hefner’s involvement was announced in the August of 1970, The Evening Standard were straight of the starting gate, predicting that the production would be a hotbed of sleaze and violence. Critics also made a lot of Macbeth being the first film Polanski directed after the brutal murder of his wife Sharon Tate in 1969. And it is definitely worth giving a thought to how his first-hand experience of this brutality fed into his depiction of Duncan’s murder. It remains, to me, an important film and one unfairly diminished in the canon of adaptations of the works of William Shakespeare. It doesn’t shy away from the horrors of the source text. The slaying of everyone in Macduff’s household, including his young son, seems to be appropriate for a stage play, yet when Polanski shows it as it was written, it’s a black mark against him. Why? It’s meant to be horrific, because Macbeth is unravelling. He’s elbow deep in gore by this point - his wife, who urged him on in his first act of treachery - the slaying of Duncan - is unable to wash the ‘filthy witness’ from her hands. She’s mentally tortured beyond endurance by her wickedness, and in the end her beauty cannot save her.

After the commercial failure of Macbeth, Polanski rose to the top again with the classic Chinatown (1974). In 1977 his career suffered a dramatic blow when he was arrested and charged with drugging and raping a 13 year old girl. He fled to Paris and remains a fugitive from the American justice system. Which has in no way affected his ability to direct critically acclaimed films such as Tess (1979) and The Pianist (2022). Considered as problematic by some as shamed director Woody Allen, actions in his private life continue to dominate the minds of many, to the detriment of his creative output.

Along with Francesca Annis, Jon Finch’s youth and beauty (he was 29, she was 26 at the time of filming), shook up how the doomed Macbeth and his wife were depicted for a generation. The exceedingly private actor — the son of a merchant banker from Sussex — was in the right place at the right time, meeting Roman Polanski on a plane when the director was in the process of casting the movie.

Finch had played in amateur stage productions, television and in two Hammer horror movies, but Macbeth was his breakout role. Though a great career beckoned Finch’s wasn’t a life of much ambition, with the actor himself stating that he made a film a year to enable himself to live comfortably. He worked with Alfred Hitchcock on Frenzy (1972) but had to resign from Alien (he was originally cast in John Hurt’s role) due to illness and turned down the role of James Bond, which later went to Roger Moore. He married actress Catriona MacColl in the 1980s, but they later divorced after five years of marriage, Finch later had a daughter from another relationship. His final film role was the Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem in Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven (2005). Jon Finch passed away in 2012.

An actress from her teens, Annis raised eyebrows with her ‘naked sleepwalking’ scene in Macbeth. She went from strength to strength after working with Polanski, with a stellar range of roles encompassing stage, film and television.

In my own personal opinion, I’m glad that the film has enjoyed a critical appraisal. Because I think it is a minor masterpiece. The casting — with Jon Finch and Francesca Annis playing against the historical norm as a younger and beautiful couple — is inspired. It feels new, yet acutely traditional. It’s wonderful to look at. And the set pieces — far from being gratuitously violent — are appropriate.

Literary critic Sylvan Barnet wrote that the younger protagonists suggested “contrast between a fair exterior and an ugly interior”. It was also noted by several critics at the time that the horrors that we see over the course of the film do not end there. The end of the film has a deeply envious Donalbain, brother to the newly crowned king Malcolm, meeting with the weird sisters. He is suggestible and vulnerable and ripe for corruption, and Polanski doesn’t hesitate in suggesting that the horrors of ambition, lust and envy will not necessarily end at the denouement of the film. So much for neatly-wrapped up endings - Polanski gives us no such comfort.

Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster had just come off Trapeze (1956) when they went straight into Sweet Smell of Success. Audiences in 1957 didn’t know what hit them and it flopped wildly.

Farewell to Ann Blyth, who has passed away at the age of 98.

This one stings - Blyth’s once-in-lifetime role as Veda in Mildred Pierce got significant coverage in my MA dissertation ‘Mildred Pierce in Adaptation’. Because it’s amongst the best young female performances in film history in my opinion.

On July 11th 1906, two lovers went out in a row boat on Big Moose Lake, Herkimer County, upstate New York. Only one of them got safely to the shore. And the legacy of this crime still echoes through to today, through one of the most memorable movies of the 1950s.

Chester Gillette, an educated, ambitious young man in his early twenties, was employed at his uncle's garment factory when he fell in with a fellow worker named Grace Brown. The two were soon embroiled in a sexual relationship, and as a consequence of this, Grace fell pregnant. Grace's pregnancy was inconvenient for Chester, especially when the young lady started to pester him to 'make an honest woman of her.' Co-workers noticed at this time that the relationship between the two factory workers was fractious, though they'd done their best to keep the true nature of their relationship between themselves.

With summer rolling around, at a time when Chester and Grace should have been enjoying the best of the season, both were thoroughly miserable. Chester, because his status at the garment factory was under threat, and Grace, because this was a time when single mothers were taboo, and she didn't want to be a social outcast. At the very least, Chester could at least do the decent thing and marry her, right? Chester could only kick the can down the road so far, and at some point Grace must have hit the limits of her tolerance with her erstwhile beau, because plans were finally made for the couple to elope. 

Grace and Chester registered under false names at the Glenmore Hotel, Franklin County. But romance and commitment were the last thing on Chester's mind. His only way through the situation, it seems, was a drastic one. Proposing a romantic boat ride, he and Grace rowed out further and further until, taking advantage of the solitude on the lake, Chester beat Grace savagely with a tennis racquet he was carrying for purpose, and allowed her to drown. Ensuring that she was now beyond help, Chester made his way to shore and, cool and collected, he checked into another hotel,The Arrowhead in Lake Fulton Lakes, using his real name. 

Grace's body was found the next day, and, of course, Chester, after it had been noted that he had been the young man in Grace's company throughout the trip, was quickly apprehended and put on trial. Chester's wealthy uncle refused to stump up for his defence so he was given a court-appointed lawyer. The evidence was overwhelming, and the case for the defence - based on the proposition that Chester had watched helplessly from the shore while Grace committed suicide on the boat - quickly fell apart. On March 30th 1908, Chester Gillette was electrocuted at Auburn Prison, New York State. 

Of course, this story, laden with sex and sensationalism was ripe for adaptation. Author Theodore Dreiser's of 1925, An American Tragedy was based on the case, and was the basis for two subsequent films An American Tragedy, a pre-code offering from 1931, and a more sumptuous adaptation A Place in the Sun in 1951. To accommodate the divine presence of a 17 year old Elizabeth Taylor, A Place in the Sun takes liberties with the original crime, placing the Chester-inspired character George Eastman in the centre of a love triangle - having to chose between the promise of Elizabeth Taylor's Angela and Shelley Winters's Academy Award nominated turn as the frumpy Alice. There had been a suggestion at the time of the trial that Chester Gillette had been courting a society daughter, but this was furiously denied by the party in question, who went so far as to issue a statement on the matter. 

A Place in the Sun shimmers with the iridescence of its two beautiful stars to the extent that the viewer roots for these two people at the height of their magnificence instead of the deeply wronged Alice. But it's through the deeply affecting performance of Winters that Alice has claws of her own. Faced with George's lies, Alice threatens to reveal his dirty secret to the luminaries that surround Angela, which encourages him to seek a permanent solution to his problem. The scene in the rowboat is almost suffocatingly tense - Alice's futile dreams meet George's anger and desperation, and we know that there is no coming back from this for him. Even if he manages to evade the police, his mind will torture him anyway and this is something that the purity of Angela's beauty can ever save him from. 

The was a career high for director George Stevens, and he took away an Academy Award for Best Director as a result. Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor were close friends for the remainder of Cllft's short and troubled life.