Judith Anderson
Birth : 1897-02-10, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
Death : 1992-01-03
History
Dame Judith Anderson was born Frances Margaret Anderson on February 10, 1897 in Adelaide, South Australia. She began her acting career in Australia before moving to New York in 1918. There she established herself as one of the greatest theatrical actresses and was a major star on Broadway throughout the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Her notable stage works included the role of Lady Macbeth, which she played first in the 1920s, and gave an Emmy Award-winning television performance in Macbeth (1960). Anderson's long association with Euripides's "Medea" began with her acclaimed Tony Award-winning 1948 stage performance in the title role. She appeared in the television version of Medea (1983) in the supporting character of the Nurse.
Anderson made her Hollywood film debut under director Rowland Brown in a supporting role in Blood Money (1933). Her striking, not conventionally attractive features were complemented with her powerful presence, mastery of timing and an effortless style. Anderson made a film career as a supporting character actress in several significant films including Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940), for which she was Oscar nominated for Best Supporting Actress. She worked with director Otto Preminger in Laura (1944), then with René Clair in And Then There Were None (1945). Her remarkable performance in a supporting role in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) fit in a stellar acting ensemble under director Richard Brooks.
Anderson was awarded Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1960 Queen's New Year's Honours List for her services to the performing arts. Living in Santa Barbara in her later years, she also had a successful stint on the soap opera Santa Barbara (1984) and was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award in 1984. In the same year, at age 87, she appeared in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) as the High Priestess, and was nominated for a Saturn Award for that role. She was awarded Companion of the Order of Australia in the 1991 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to the performing arts. Anderson died at age 94 of pneumonia on January 3, 1992 in Santa Barbara, California.
actress 'Laura' (archive footage) (uncredited)
This documentary, hosted by actor Burgess Meredith, explores the life and career of movie director Otto Preminger, whose body of work includes such memorable films as Anatomy of a Murder, Exodus, Laura, Forever Amber, Advise and Consent, In Harm's Way, The Moon Is Blue, The Man with the Golden Arm, and many other movies made from the '30s through the '70s. Interviews with actors Frank Sinatra, Vincent Price, James Stewart, Michael Caine, and others who worked with the flamboyant and sometimes control-obsessed director add information and insight to the story.
The Sister of Purgatory (voice)
Four male friends are reunited after not being in contact with each other for several years. However, the meeting place is Purgatory, the afterlife state of limbo between heaven and hell. In Purgatory, these friends reflect on their pasts while they were living. They especially focus on their years in Catholic School and their coming of age. This film talks a lot about sexual issues. One of the characters is an 18-year old sent to Vietnam who dies without ever losing his virginity and there is a middle-aged, homosexual alcoholic playwright who has still has problems dealing with his identity.
Vulcan High Priestess
Admiral Kirk and his bridge crew risk their careers stealing the decommissioned Enterprise to return to the restricted Genesis planet to recover Spock's body.
Nurse
Medea is in Corinth with Jason and their two young sons. King Kreon wants to reward Jason for his exploits: he gives the hand of his daughter, Glauce, to Jason.
Caroline Straulle
A sheriff investigates why the guests at a local hostelry check in, but never check out.
Mrs. Snow
A private detective goes after the kidnappers of his ex-girlfriend's son and becomes involved in a series of murders.
Aunt Sophie
An eight-year-old boy discovers a family of tiny people, only a few inches tall, living beneath the floorboards of a Victorian country home.
Buffalo Cow Head
In 1825, English peer Lord John Morgan is cast adrift in the American West. Captured by Sioux Indians, Morgan is at first targeted for quick extinction, but the tribesmen sense that he is worthy of survival. He eventually passes the many necessary tests that will permit him to become a member of the tribe.
Elizabeth Devlin
A young woman finds herself engulfed in Cold War intrigue when her father, a Nobel Prize-winning author, vanishes while travelling near the Russian border. Entrusted by her father with an unfinished book he was working on before his trip, the young woman becomes engaged in a power struggle over the material with her estranged stepmother. Suspiciously befriended by a journalist in the midst of the crisis, the young woman ultimately learns that no one is to be trusted - as her father's work is of interest to the intelligence departments of several countries.
Lady Macbeth
Hallmark Hall of Fame's second version of Shakespeare's classic play, with the same two stars and the same director as its first version, but a different supporting cast.
Paulina
Terrified of being buried alive, a woman installs a phone in her crypt. A few days after her death, the phone suddenly rings and paranormal investigator Nelson Orion is brought in to probe the case.
'Rebecca' (archive footage) (uncredited)
Henry Fonda hosts this retrospective on the career and films of iconic filmmaker David O. Selznick, who epitomized the era of the auteur producer in the 30s and 40s.
Maggie Shoemaker
An Edinburgh travel agent loses his keys and his fiancé in one night. A friend finds the keys and makes loads of copies with his address attached as a joke. She gives them to him as he leaves for a holiday. He gives the keys to several women he romances across the continent. He gets engaged again by phone and arranges to meet his fiancé at his flat, but the flat isn't empty
Wicked Stepmother
When his father dies, poor Fella is left at the mercy of his snobbish stepmother and her two no-good sons Maximilian and Rupert. As he slaves away for his nasty step-family, Maximilian and Rupert attempt to find a treasure Fella's father has supposedly hidden on the estate. Hoping to restore her dwindling fortunes, the stepmother plans a fancy ball in honor of the visiting Princess Charmein whom she hopes will marry Rupert. Eventually, Fella's Fairy Godfather shows up to convince him that he has a shot at winning the Princess himself.
Narrator of the final offering
A Christmas Festival was an annual television special by the anthology program Hallmark Hall of Fame. The 1959 event originally aired on December 13, 1959, and marked Elke Sommer's first appearance (in the role of The Princess) on American television.
Tiare
A staid, dull Englishman abruptly deserts his wife and children to become a painter in the South Seas.
Medea
A betrayed queen takes a terrible revenge.
Big Momma
An alcoholic ex-football player drinks his days away, having failed to come to terms with his sexuality and his real feelings for his football buddy who died after an ambiguous accident. His wife is crucified by her desperation to make him desire her: but he resists the affections of his wife. His reunion with his father—who is dying of cancer—jogs a host of memories and revelations for both father and son.
Memnet
Escaping death, a Hebrew infant is raised in a royal household to become a prince. Upon discovery of his true heritage, Moses embarks on a personal quest to reclaim his destiny as the leader and liberator of the Hebrew people.
Queen Herodias
In the reign of emperor Tiberius, Gallilean prophet John the Baptist preaches against King Herod and Queen Herodias. The latter wants John dead, but Herod fears to harm him due to a prophecy. Enter beautiful Princess Salome, Herod's long-absent stepdaughter. Herodias sees the king's dawning lust for Salome as her means of bending the king to her will. But Salome and her lover Claudius are (contrary to Scripture) nearing conversion to the new religion. And the famous climactic dance turns out to have unexpected implications...
Flo Burnett
A New Mexico cattle man and his strong-willed daughter clash over the man's choice for a new bride. Things get worse when the elder man has his daughter's lover hanged. With the help of an old flame, a gambler, the daughter puts into motion a plan to drive her father from his estate.
Miss Ellen Braithwaite
Engineer Johnny Munroe is enlisted to build a railroad tunnel through a mountain to reach mines. His task is complicated, and his ethics are compromised, when he falls in love with his boss's daughter
Mrs. Callum
A boy haunted by nightmares about the night his entire family was murdered is brought up by a neighboring family in the 1880s. He falls for his lovely adoptive sister but his nasty adoptive brother and mysterious uncle want him dead.
Ellen Morgan
An old man and his sister are concealing a terrible secret from their adopted teen daughter, concerning a hidden abandoned farmhouse, located deep in the woods.
Mrs. Ivers
Three childhood friends, Martha, Walter and Sam, share a terrible secret. Over time, the ambitious Martha and the pusillanimous Walter have married. She is a cold businesswoman; he is the district attorney: a perfect combination to dominate the corrupt city of Iverstown at will. But the unexpected return of Sam, after years of absence, deeply disturbs the life of the odd couple.
Madame La Sylph
Ballet dancer Sanine may have murdered his first wife. A detective thinks so, and he's not the only one.
Madame Lanlaire
Celestine, the chamber-maid, has a new job in the country, at the Lanlaires. She has decided to use her beauty to seduce a wealthy man, but Mr. Lanlaire is not a right choice: the house is firmly controlled by Madame Lanlaire, helped by the strange valet Joseph. Then she tries the neighbour, former officer Mauger. This seems to work. But soon the son of the Lanlaires comes back. He is young, attractive and does not share his mother's antirepublican opinions. So Celestine's beauty attracts Captain Mauger, young Georges Lanlaire, and Joseph. Three men, from three different social classes, with three different conceptions of life. Will Celestine be able to convince Georges of her sincerity?
Emily Brent
Ten strangers are summoned to a remote island and while they are waiting for the mysterious host to appear, a recording levels serious accusations at each of the guests. Soon they start being murdered, one by one. As the survivors try to keep their wits, they reach a disturbing conclusion: one of them must be the killer.
Ann Treadwell
A police detective falls in love with the woman whose murder he's investigating.
Judith Anderson
A young soldier on a pass in New York City visits the famed Stage Door Canteen, where famous stars of the theater and films appear and host a recreational center for servicemen during the war. The soldier meets a pretty young hostess and they enjoy the many entertainers and a growing romance
Gerd Bjarnesen
The film pivots around the local Norwegian doctor and his family. The doctor's wife (Ruth Gordon) wants to hold on to the pretence of gracious living and ignore their German occupiers. The doctor, Martin Stensgard (Walter Huston), would also prefer to stay neutral, but is torn. His brother-in-law, the wealthy owner of the local fish cannery, collaborates with the Nazis. The doctor's daughter, Karen (Ann Sheridan), is involved with the resistance and with its leader Gunnar Brogge (Errol Flynn). The doctor's son has just returned to town, having been sent down from the university, and is soon influenced by his Nazi-sympathizer uncle. Captain Koenig (Helmut Dantine), the young German commandant of the occupying garrison, whose fanatic determination to do everything by the book and spoutings about the invincibility of the Reich hides a growing fear of a local uprising.
Harriet Gordon
Five young adults in a small American town face the revelations of secrets that threaten to ruin their hopes and dreams.
Madame
Broadway gamblers stumble across a plan by Nazi saboteurs to blow up an American battleship.
Slade
A Chicago gang led by Slade carries out an audacious brokerage robbery. Lieutenant Bill Mason takes the case, continuing his friendly-enemy relationship with crime reporter Ann Rogers. One gang member is caught; eventually, others follow. But Mason hasn't a clue to Slade, principally because he's unaware she's a woman.
Lady Joan Culver
This MGM B-picture was adapted from Ivor Novello's play The Truth Game. Max and Florian Clemington pretend to be members of the landed gentry. Max romances the much-older Lady Joan Culver before finding true love in the form of pretty heiress Martha Gray.
Madame Granville
An out-of-work professor gets a break from an old college buddy to teach at an exclusive girl's school. But events conspire against him: he finds an abandoned child which he takes under his wing, despite the school's rules against teachers having a family; and the girls in the school resent his replacing a handsome and popular teacher, and do everything in their power to get him fired.
Mrs. Danvers
Story of a young woman who marries a fascinating widower only to find out that she must live in the shadow of his former wife, Rebecca, who died mysteriously several years earlier. The young wife must come to grips with the terrible secret of her handsome, cold husband, Max De Winter. She must also deal with the jealous, obsessed Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper, who will not accept her as the mistress of the house.
Ruby Darling
The title refers to the business of affable, ambitious bail bondsman (and politically-connected grifter) Bill Bailey, who, in the course of his work, crosses paths with every kind of offender there is, from first-time defendants to career criminals.
