Judy Balaban, the daughter of a longtime studio mogul who dated Montgomery Clift and Merv Griffin, married Tony Franciosa and served as one of Grace Kelly’s bridesmaids at her wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco, has died. She was 91.

Balaban died Thursday night in a hospital in Los Angeles, her friend, author and documentary filmmaker Cari Beauchamp, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Balaban was a champion for civil rights, serving on the board of directors for the ACLU of Southern California for decades.

In a 2010 piece for Vanity Fair that she and Beauchamp co-wrote, Balaban described using LSD (then legal) as a form of therapy in the early 1960s when her good friends Cary Grant and his third wife, Betsy Drake, were using it, too.

“What I had with Cary and Betsy was a kind of soul-baringness that the culture didn’t start to deal with until years later,” she says in the story.

By Brian Greene

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“It’s easy to manipulate men.”

That’s a key line in Alan J. Pakula’s 1971 film Klute, which has just been released in a new Criterion Collection edition. The line is delivered by a New York City call girl named Bree Daniels, as portrayed by Jane Fonda, who won a Best Actress in a Leading Role Oscar for this performance.

“It’s easy to manipulate men” is a striking declaration, especially when it comes from the mouth of a paid sexual escort. But some context is necessary here, because when Daniels utters that line to her psychiatrist – in one of a few crucial scenes that take place in Daniels’s shrink’s office – she is actually talking about the one man in her life whom she’s not sure she can control. This is John Klute (played by Donald Sutherland...

1968: NBC daytime soap Hidden Faces premiered.

1983: Guiding Light's Phillip and Beth spent New Year's Eve in New York.

2002: The "Surrender" arc began on Port Charles.

2003: One Life to Live's Dorian visited All My Children's Pine Valley."History speaks to artists. It changes the artist's thinking and is constantly reshaping it into different and unexpected images."

― Anselm Kiefer

"Today in Soap Opera History" is a collection of the most memorable, interesting and influential events in the history of scripted, serialized programs. From birthdays and anniversaries to scandals and controversies, every day this column celebrates the soap opera in American culture.

On this date in...

1963: ABC shifted General Hospital to the 3 p.m. Et time slot after nearly 9 months of airing at 1 p.m.

1964: On Another World, Pat Matthews (Susan Trustman) refused to give John Randolph (Michael M. Ryan) permission to access her medical records.

1968: NBC daytime soap Hidden Faces premiered. 1983: Guiding

Light's Phillip and Beth spent New Year's Eve in New York.

2002: The "Surrender" arc began on Port Charles. 2003: One

Life to Live's Dorian visited All My Children's Pine Valley."History is a vast early warning system."

― Norman Cousins

"Today in Soap Opera History" is a collection of the most memorable, interesting and influential events in the history of scripted, serialized programs. From birthdays and anniversaries to scandals and controversies, every day this column celebrates the soap opera in American culture.

On this date in...

1963: ABC shifted General Hospital to the 3 p.m. Et time slot after nearly 9 months of airing at 1 p.m.

1964: On Another World, Pat Matthews (Susan Trustman) refused to give John Randolph (Michael M. Ryan) permission to access her medical records.

1968: NBC daytime soap opera Hidden Faces premiered. Created by Irving Vendig, the...

Nunnally Johnson hands us a well-written spy & hostage drama set in Cold War Berlin, with plenty of intrigue and good humor to boot. Gregory Peck is the troubled negotiator and Broderick Crawford a Yankee galoot sticking his nose where it isn’t wanted. This one has been out of reach for quite a while — and it works up some fun suspense.

Night People

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1954 / Color / 2:55 widescreen / 93 min. / Street Date July 25, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Gregory Peck, Broderick Crawford, Anita Björk, Rita Gam, Walter Abel, Buddy Ebsen, Max Showalter, Jill Esmond, Peter van Eyck, Marianne Koch, Hugh McDermott, Paul Carpenter, Lionel Murton, Ottow Reichow.

Cinematography: Charles G. Clarke

Film Editor: Dorothy Spencer

Original Music: Cyril Mockridge

Story by Jed Harris, Tom Reed

Associate Producer Gerd Oswald

Written, Directed and Produced by Nunnally Johnson

An intelligent cold war thriller about distrust and passive aggression across the East-West divide in Berlin,...

No, not a blind Sherlock Holmes, but a blind Van Johnson, who directs his butler, his girlfriend Vera Miles and the London police to thwart a crime based on something he overheard in a bar. Henry Hathaway directs a complicated murder mystery that plays like a combo of Rear Window and Wait Until Dark, with a cranky Van Johnson as the central character.

23 Paces to Baker Street

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1956 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 103 min. / Street Date February 21, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Van Johnson, Vera Miles, Cecil Parker, Patricia Laffan, Maurice Denham, Estelle Winwood, Liam Redmond, Isobel Elsom, Martin Benson, Queenie Leonard.

Cinematography: Milton Krasner

Film Editor: James B. Clark

Original Music: Leigh Harline

Written by Nigel Balchin from the novel Warrant for X by Philip MacDonald

Produced by Henry Ephron

Directed by Henry Hathaway

In the 1950s the murder mystery thriller came of age, as creakier older formulas...

Versatile actor with notable roles in films such as The Thief and Klute

The actor Rita Gam, who has died aged 87, starred in many films from the 1950s onwards, alongside famous names including Gregory Peck and Jane Fonda. When just 24, with modest stage and television experience, she was cast opposite another leading figure, Ray Milland, for her Hollywood debut in what the publicity described as “the only motion picture of its kind”.

This was The Thief (1952), a cold war spy film devised by the writer-director Russell Rouse in the style of Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights (1931) as a sound film entirely without dialogue. Indeed, Rouse went one better in having no intertitles, the cards using written words to set the scene or supply the dialogue.

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The 1950s film star Rita Gam, known for her roles in pictures like Saadia and Sign of the Pagan, died Tuesday at 88. Gam was born on April 2, 1927, beginning her performing arts career with a Broadway debut in 1946. She was nominated for a Golden Globe in 1952 for her performance in The Thief and also had many notable television credits including The […]

The post Rita Gam, 1950s Film Star, Dies At 88 appeared first on uInterview.

A veteran 1950s breakout who went on to a lengthy career in film and television, Rita Gam has died. Her publicist, Nancy Willen, told press the actress passed away in Los Angeles of respiratory failure on Tuesday. She was 88. Born in Pittsburgh in 1927, Gam made her Broadway debut in 1946 and returned several times throughout her career as actress and producer, notably in the cast of the 1967 British comedy hit There’s a Girl in My Soup. In 1963, she was a leading member…...

Actress and first wife of famous director Sidney Lumet, Rita Gam has died, according to reports. She was 88. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Gam died from respiratory failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on Tuesday. During her acting career, Gam starred in films like Saadia, Sign of the Pagan and King of Kings. Gam also played the real life role of one of Grace Kelly's bridesmaids when the actress wed Prince Ranier in 1956, THR adds. Aside from her on screen roles, Gam also starred in a handful of stage productions including Wit & Wisdom, Hamlet and There's a Girl in My Soup.

Actress and first wife of famous director Sidney Lumet, Rita Gam has died, according to reports. She was 88. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Gam died from respiratory failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on Tuesday. During her acting career, Gam starred in films like Saadia, Sign of the Pagan and King of Kings. Gam also played the real life role of one of Grace Kelly's bridesmaids when the actress wed Prince Ranier in 1956, THR adds. Aside from her on screen roles, Gam also starred in a handful of stage productions including Wit & Wisdom, Hamlet and There's a Girl in My Soup.

Rita Gam, a ’50s film star and founding member of The Actor’s Studio, died Tuesday of respiratory failure in Los Angeles. She was 88. Gam’s credits include “Night People” and “Shoot Out” alongside Gregory Peck, “Hannibal” with Victor Mature and appearances on “The Rockford Files.” Later in life, Gam produced a series on the global film business and a PBS travel show called “World of Beauty.” Gam was the ex-wife of legendary director Sidney Lumet (“12 Angry Men,” “Dog Day Afternoon”), and a close confidant to the late Grace Kelly, for whom she stood as bridesmaid during the “High Society” actress’ 1956 wedding to Prince.

Rita Gam, a glamorous actress who starred in such exotic films as Saadia with Cornel Wilde, Sign of the Pagan with Jack Palance as Attila the Hun and Nicholas Ray's biblical King of Kings, died Tuesday. She was 88.   Gam, who was director Sidney Lumet's first wife and a bridesmaid at Grace Kelly's 1956 wedding to Prince Rainier, died of respiratory failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, publicist Nancy Willen said. Gam also appeared opposite Gregory Peck in Night People (1954) and Shoot Out (1971), in William Dieterle's Magic Fire (1955), with Victor Mature in Hannibal (1959) and with

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Jane Fonda: From ‘Vietnam Traitor’ to AFI Award and Screen Legend status (photo: Jason Bateman and Jane Fonda in ‘This Is Where I Leave You’) (See previous post: “Jane Fonda Movies: Anti-Establishment Heroine.”) Turner Classic Movies will also be showing the 2014 AFI Life Achievement Award ceremony honoring Jane Fonda, the former “Vietnam Traitor” and Barbarella-style sex kitten who has become a living American screen legend (and healthy-living guru). Believe it or not, Fonda, who still looks disarmingly great, will be turning 77 years old next December 21; she’s actually older than her father Henry Fonda was while playing Katharine Hepburn’s ailing husband in Mark Rydell’s On Golden Pond. (Henry Fonda died at age 77 in August 1982.) Jane Fonda movies in 2014 and 2015 Following a 15-year absence (mostly during the time she was married to media mogul Ted Turner), Jane Fonda resumed her film acting career in 2005, playing Jennifer Lopez...

Model and actress Doe Avedon Siegel, best known for her marriages to photographer Richard Avedon and to Dirty Harry movie director Don Siegel, died Sunday in Los Angeles. She was 86. Born Dorcas Nowell (on April 7, 1928) in Westbury, New York, she was discovered by Avedon, who married her in 1944. (Avedon herself told journalists she began her acting career while working as a waitress.) A highly romanticized version of their courtship was turned into a would-be play by Leonard Gershe, Funny Face, which finally was produced as a Paramount musical in 1957, starring Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn under the direction of Stanley Donen. By then, the Avedons had been divorced for six years. Doe Avedon's stage debut took place in 1948, in the Broadway production of N. Richard Nash's The Young and Fair, which also featured Julie Harris, Rita Gam, and future Oscar winner Mercedes McCambridge. For her efforts, Avedon was...

Prolific film director with a reputation for exploring social and moral issues

Sidney Lumet, who has died aged 86, achieved critical and commercial success with his first film, 12 Angry Men (1957), which established his credentials as a liberal director who was sympathetic to actors, loved words and worked quickly. For the bulk of his career, he averaged a film a year, earning four Oscar nominations along the way for best director, for 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Network (1976) and The Verdict (1982).

It is arguable that, had he not been so prolific, Lumet's critical reputation would have been greater. Certainly, for every worthwhile film there was a dud, and occasionally a disaster, to match it. But Lumet loved to direct and he was greatly esteemed by the many actors – notably Al Pacino and Sean Connery – with whom he established a lasting rapport.

The majority of his films were shot not in Hollywood, but in and around New York.

Sidney Lumet was an impassioned director who received more than 50 Oscar nominations for films including 12 Angry Men and Dog Day Afternoon

Sidney Lumet, who died yesterday at the age of 86, was one of the most significant film directors of his time, a man dedicated to the cinema as an art form and to the pursuit of truth and social justice as a dramatic theme.

He was born in Philadelphia and raised in New York, the son of parents who worked in the Yiddish theatre. He was shaped by his experiences as a child performer and the depression, becoming known for his sympathetic handling of actors, his understanding of people in crisis, his liberal principles and his feeling for the city that was the setting for so much of his work.

Lumet made his Broadway debut at the age of 11 in 1935 in Sidney Kingsley's Dead End, a social-problem play about...

Director Sidney Lumet, whose gritty portraits of New York City earned him four Oscar nominations for Best Director for films such as Dog Day Afternoon and Network, died Saturday of lymphoma at his home in Manhattan; he was 86. Synonymous with the New York filmmaking scene, Lumet prowled the streets of his adopted hometown in a wide variety of films, working in the nascent medium of television in the early 1950s before making his feature film directorial debut in 1957 with the cinematic adaptation of the jury room classic 12 Angry Men, starring Henry Fonda. That film earned Lumet his first Oscar nomination and started a prolific career that would take him through crime dramas, Broadway and literary adaptations, occasional Hollywood films, and lacerating satires.

Born in Philadelphia to parents who were in show business -- his father was an actor and director, his mother a dancer -- he appeared in numerous Broadway plays as a child and young adult before serving three years in the Army during World War II and returning to New York to direct. Lumet's directorial style, described as "lightning quick" in an era when American cinema was still burdened by the limitations of decorative and expensive Hollywood films, earned him a successful career in television, where he adapted numerous plays for such early shows as Playhouse 90 and Studio One, and worked with the young Walter Cronkite on the news series You Are There. He directed a TV version of 12 Angry Men before turning it into a successful 1957 film, starring Henry Fonda as the lone dissenting juror in a murder trial; the film earned three Academy Award nominations (Best Picture, Director and Screenplay) and singlehandedly established Lumet's cinematic directing career.

Lumet alternated film and television work in the late 1950s and early 1960s -- including a television version of The Iceman Cometh starring Jason Robards -- before helming a number of acclaimed cinematic films in the early 1960s: the devastating adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962) starring Katharine Hepburn and Ralph Richardson; the New York drama The Pawnbroker (1964), which earned Rod Steiger a Best Actor Oscar nomination; and the nuclear drama Fail-Safe (also 1964), starring Henry Fonda and Walter Matthau. Through the late 1960s and early 1970s some of Lumet's work was uneven -- adaptations of bestsellers The Group (1966) and The Anderson Tapes (1971) as well as Chekhov's The Sea Gull (1968) are admirable but not entirely successful -- but scored again throughout the 1970s. The crime drama Serpico (1973) helped cement Al Pacino's star status after The Godfather -- and earned the actor his first Best Actor Oscar nomination, and the actor and director paired again in 1975's Dog Day Afternoon, the story of a bank heist gone crazily awry; the film, now considered a modern classic, earned Lumet and Pacino Oscar nominations and some of the best reviews of their careers. In between those films, set in New York, Lumet took a literal and figurative jaunt with the successful adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1974), an upper-class murder mystery set on a luxury European train that seemed as far from the seamy streets of Manhattan as possible.

In 1976, Lumet explored the themes of media exposure and saturation he delved into with Dog Day Afternoon even further with the scathing television satire and drama Network, starring William Holden, Faye Dunaway and Peter Finch. Lumet, along with screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky, pioneered the idea (and condemnation) of what is now commonly thought of as reality TV in his story of a network anchorman (Finch) who suffers a breakdown on live television with the rallying cry "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!", and the television executive (Dunaway) who turns him into a folk hero, TV icon, and tragic figure, ultimately goading him into committing suicide live on television. The film, still potent and more lacerating than most explorations of modern media since, won Finch and Dunaway Oscars; Finch's award was posthumous, as the actor died in early 1977. It remains one of only two films to win three Academy Awards for acting (the third for supporting actress Beatrice Straight, who appeared onscreen for less than six minutes), the other being A Streetcar Named Desire.

After that string of commercial and financial hits, Lumet's career included a wide variety of films: adaptations of Broadway hits Equus (1977, fairly successful), The Wiz (1978, a musical flop but a strangely visionary view of New York), Deathtrap (1982, unexpected fun if not a perfect film); crime drama Prince of the City (1981, one of Lumet's most unheralded fims); courtroom drama The Verdict (1982, a big hit that earned star Paul Newman and Lumet Oscar nominations); Hollywood melodrama (1986's The Morning After, starring Jane Fonda); and indie drama (Running On Empty, the 1988 drama with River Phoenix in his only Oscar-nominated performance). Lumet's last film was the 2007 drama Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, which starred indie stalwarts Philip Seymour Hoffman, Marisa Tomei, Ethan Hawke, and Amy Ryan.

Lumet was married four times, first to actress Rita Gam, second to socialite Gloria Vanderbilt, and third to Gail Jones, daughter of Lena Horne. He married Mary Gimbel, who survives him, in 1980 and had two daughters with Ms. Jones, Amy Lumet and screenwriter Jenny Lumet, who scripted the drama Rachel Getting Married. Nominated for five Oscars (four for directing, one for screenplay), Lumet was awarded an honorary Academy Award at the 2004 Oscars.

Sidney Lumet, the director behind American movie classics such as 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon and The Verdict, died Saturday. He was 86. Lumet died from lymphoma at his home in New York City his stepdaughter, Leslie Gimbel, tells The New York Times. The film director, famous for creating art impassioned by social justice and satire, told The Times in 2007 that he made movies not as an attempt to change the world, but for his own love of the field. "I do it because I like it," he said. "And it's a wonderful way to spend your life." His films, which...

Lumet on the set of Dog Day AfternoonDirector Sidney Lumet passed away this Saturday morning of lymphoma at his home in New York City. He was 86.

Lumet last directed Before the Devil Knows You're Dead in 2007, but was best known as the director of 12 Angry Men, Network, Dog Day Afternoon, The Verdict and Serpico.

He was one of the great and respected directors to have never won an Oscar despite his many wonderful films and five Oscar nominations. He was, however, awarded an honorary Oscar in 2005. His films were nominated for a total of 46 Oscars and won six with 1976's Network being his most awarded with four.

Lumet was married three times -- to Rita Gam, Gloria Vanderbilt and Gail Jones -- before marrying his current wife Mary Gimbel in 1980. He is survived by his wife, stepdaughter Leslie Gimbel, stepson Bailey Gimble and daughters Amy Lumet and Jenny Lumet as...