Eve
April 28, 2005, 1:21pm
1
From various newspapers, April 28:
Maria Schell , an international film and television actress of the 1940s and ’50s and older sister of actor and director Maximilian Schell, has died. She was 79. Schell died Tuesday at her home in the Austrian town of Preitenegg. The dazzling blond performer’s career peaked in the 1950s, when she starred in Hollywood films such as The Brothers Karamazov and won the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival for the German-language The Last Bridge and at the Venice Film Festival for the French-language Gervaise. When Bridge, featuring Schell as a German doctor forced to treat Yugoslav partisans hiding out during World War II, was screened in Los Angeles in 1958, a Times reviewer raved: “Fraulein Schell, with that delicate, utterly luminous face and those immense, chastely ravishing eyes of hers, is a dramatic instrument of unbelievable sensitivity.”
She seems to have become a real-life Norma Desmond in her later years:
At the time her brother created the documentary, Schell was living reclusively in Carinthia in southern Austria, bankrupt, battling health problems and spending much of her time watching her old movies on multiple television sets. “It all comes back, I’m inside the scene immediately, I was so happy then,” she said in the documentary in answer to her director brother’s questions. “It’s more interesting than reality, don’t you think?”
Kay Walsh , who died on April 16 aged 93, was the second of six wives of David Lean and starred in some of his best-known films, including In Which We Serve (1942), This Happy Breed (1944) and Oliver Twist (1948), in which she took the role of Nancy . . . Her career blossomed during her time with Lean, perhaps most notably in her performance as Queenie, Celia Johnson’s errant daughter in Noel Coward’s This Happy Breed (1944). As well as In Which we Serve and Oliver Twist, she appeared with Anthony Newley in the comedy Vice Versa (1948), directed by Peter Ustinov, and played alongside Marlene Dietrich and Jane Wyman in the Hitchcock thriller Stage Fright (1950). Kay Walsh continued her acting career into the 1980s, giving outstanding performances in The Magnet (1950) Last Holiday (1950) and Encore (1952), a Harold French comedy in which she played a demanding spinster, and travelled to Hollywood for Young Bess (1953).
Mason Adams , a ubiquitous character actor in radio, television, movies and the theater whose crotchety but reassuring tone of voice was as famous as his face, died on Tuesday at his home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He was 86 . . . Mr. Adams worked as much off screen as he did on camera, and won his first starring roles in the radio serials of the 1940’s and 50’s. Long after his radio days, he found fame again on the successful television series Lou Grant. As he grew older, he took more frequent roles in the theater. His last play was the Roundabout Theater production of The Man Who Had All the Luck, by Arthur Miller, in 2002. Mr. Adams’s voice became synonymous with the J. M. Smucker Company, which featured him in its jam and jelly commercials for more than 30 years. His trademark line - “With a name like Smucker’s, it has to be good” - was so often repeated that the writers of Saturday Night Live wrote a skit spoofing it.
Damn. I actually thought about putting Mason Adams on my Death Pool list but decided against it.
[sub]This stairway here will take me directly to hell? Thanks![/sub]
Mason Adams dead? Who the hell is going to do voice-overs for my commercials now?
I was so surprised when he showed up as a regular on Lou Grant . I’d sorta come to see him as a disembodied voice. Now he’s a disembodied voice full-time.
I have several radio shows featuring Adams, and particularly love his portrayal of Hugh Hoyland in Dimension X ’s adaption of RAH’s Universe .
Rest in peace.
Sir Rhosis
With a name like Mason, he’s got to be dead.
ouryL
April 29, 2005, 10:25pm
6
Maria Schell, an international film and television actress of the 1940s and ’50s and older sister of actor and director Maximilian Schell, has died. She was 79. Schell died Tuesday at her home in the Austrian town of Preitenegg. The dazzling blond performer’s career peaked in the 1950s, when she starred in Hollywood films such as The Brothers Karamazov and won the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival for the German-language The Last Bridge and at the Venice Film Festival for the French-language Gervaise. When Bridge, featuring Schell as a German doctor forced to treat Yugoslav partisans hiding out during World War II, was screened in Los Angeles in 1958, a Times reviewer raved: “Fraulein Schell, with that delicate, utterly luminous face and those immense, chastely ravishing eyes of hers, is a dramatic instrument of unbelievable sensitivity.”
Ich vermisse sie. Ich sah sie zuletzt im Film, “Christmas Lilies of the Fields.”