Rex Ingram in 'The Thief of Bagdad' 1940 with tiny Sabu. Actor Rex Ingram movies on TCM: Early black film performer in 'Cabin in the Sky,' 'Anna Lucasta' It's somewhat unusual for two well-known film celebrities, whether past or present, to share the same name.* One such rarity is – or rather, are – the two movie people known as Rex Ingram;† one an Irish-born white director, the other an Illinois-born black actor. Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” continues today, Aug. 11, '15, with a day dedicated to the latter. Right now, TCM is showing Cabin in the Sky (1943), an all-black musical adaptation of the Faust tale that is notable as the first full-fledged feature film directed by another Illinois-born movie person, Vincente Minnelli. Also worth mentioning, the movie marked Lena Horne's first important appearance in a mainstream motion picture.§ A financial disappointment on the...
- 8/12/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Rex Ingram (top); Barbara La Marr, Ramon Novarro, in Ingram's Trifling Women (bottom) St. Patrick's Day always reminds me of silent-era filmmaker Rex Ingram, among whose silent-era efforts are The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Prisoner of Zenda, Scaramouche, Mare Nostrum, The Magician, and The Garden of Allah, and whose birth — as Reginald Ingram Montgomery Hitchcock — took place in Dublin on Jan. 15, 1893. (Some sources have 1892, but in Rex Ingram: Master of the Silent Cinema author Liam O'Leary, citing a birth notice in The Irish Times, states that 1893 is the correct date.) Though largely forgotten today, Ingram's work — clearly shaped by his background in painting and sculpture — was so influential that it inspired Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu to pursue a film career. British filmmaker Michael Powell, who initially worked as Ingram's assistant, referred to him as "the greatest stylist of his time," while .David [...]...
- 3/19/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Van Johnson, Elizabeth Taylor in Richard Brooks' The Last Time I Saw Paris (top); Alice Terry, Antonio Moreno in Rex Ingram's Mare Nostrum (middle); Gina Lollobrigida (bottom) F. Scott Fitzgerald, Rex Ingram, and Gina Lollobrigida. No, not together again — or ever, for that matter. But samples of their individual works can all be found this evening on Turner Classic Movies. Right now, TCM is showing Henry King's Tender Is the Night (1962), Jennifer Jones' swan song as a major movie star. Jones was criticized for being too old to play the film's young heroine Nicole Diver — and at 42 or so she surely was. Having said that, let me add that I enjoyed her performance all the same. Coincidentally, I'm currently reading Richard Buller's biography of silent-film actress Lois Moran (the young daughter in the 1925 version of Stella Dallas), who befriended F. Scott Fitzgerald in the late 1920s...
- 12/6/2010
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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