Susan Stamberg

How One Family Built America's Public Palaces

Susan Stamberg — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 07:24:00 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJETeJk93vE

Friedkin, Who Pushed Film Forward, Looks Back

Susan Stamberg — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 07:03:00 +0000

As a kid in Chicago, director William Friedkin liked to frighten little girls with scary stories. When he grew up, he scared the rest of us with a little girl — Regan MacNeil, who is possessed by the devil in his horror classic The Exorcist.

And in The French Connection, he put knots in our stomachs with one of the great movie chases in American cinema.

When Friedkin directed these films in the 1970s, he was breaking all the rules.

Painting 'Renoir' In Finely Detailed Strokes

Susan Stamberg — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 07:21:00 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA4pRAZQY3g

For John Baldessari, Conceptual Art Means Serious Mischief

Susan Stamberg — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 08:41:00 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU7V4GyEuXA

Vermeer's 'Woman In Blue' Brings Her Mystery, Allure To L.A.

Susan Stamberg — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 07:38:00 +0000

Johannes Vermeer's Girl With a Pearl Earring is easy to fall in love with — she's young, dewy, beautiful (Scarlett Johansson played her in the 2003 movie about the painting), and she looks right at you.

For Publicist Marvin Levy, It's All About Eyeballs

Susan Stamberg — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 05:03:00 +0000

Steven Spielberg's film Lincoln has earned 12 Academy Award nominations, including best picture and best director. Another Spielberg film — the multi-Oscar winning Schindler's List — will be celebrating 20 years since its release. These films have at least two important things in common: Spielberg and publicist Marvin Levy.

Levy started his career in New York writing questions for quiz shows. He wound up in publicity for MGM radio and TV personalities, but was lured to Hollywood in the mid-1970s.

For Film Set Decorators, Tiny Details Count

Susan Stamberg — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 05:05:00 +0000

Picture Rick's smoky cafe in Casablanca, Lincoln's office at the White House of the 1860s, or the Mos Eisley cantina on the desert planet of Tatooine: A production designer came up with the overall look of those movie sets. But the booze on Rick's bar or the pens on Lincoln's desk — it took a set decorator and a crew to make them look authentic and believable.

On a recent chilly winter day in the backyard of a pretty picket-fenced house in Los Angeles, one set decorator is making rosebushes bloom again.

Hollywood's 'Hooray': Hardly A Happy Hymn

Susan Stamberg — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 08:35:00 +0000

When the Oscars are handed out later this month, the ceremony will most likely be punctuated by music that has pretty much come to stand for movies and Movieland. Ironically, the composer grew up in Detroit, and the lyricist came from Savannah, Ga. — yet together they wrote the quintessential Tinseltown anthem.

"Hooray for Hollywood" was written for the Warner Brothers film Hollywood Hotel. It was a corny little "let's-go-to-Hollywood-and become-stars" movie from 1937, with some cute dialogue.

The movie didn't do much, box office-wise, but that song made it big.

From Aleppo, An Artifact Of A Calmer Age

Susan Stamberg — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 08:28:00 +0000

Over the past six months, the headlines from Aleppo, Syria, have been horrifying. As the conflict between rebel forces and the government continues, the city has been overrun by tanks and artillery, and assaulted by shots, explosions and fires.

But Aleppo's present belies a much richer past. It's Syria's largest city, and one of the world's oldest continually inhabited urban areas.

WWII 'Canteen Girl' Kept Troops Company From Afar

Susan Stamberg — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 08:20:00 +0000

American service members have long spent holidays in dangerous places, far from family. These days, home is a video chat or Skype call away. But during World War II, packages, letters and radio programs bridged the lonely gaps. For 15 minutes every week, "Canteen Girl" Phyllis Jeanne Creore spoke and sang to the troops and their loved ones on NBC radio.

Her Christmas shows were morale boosters. America must "use more sentiment and less tinsel, and that's the way it should be," she told her listeners during one wartime Christmas broadcast.