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I adore diving into former worlds and I find their acting, scenery, camera work, film quality and everything else way better quality than anything produced today.

If you’ve landed in my Film Sea, maybe you were searching for info on some of my very favorite film perfomers of all time, like Beulah Bondi, or Sheree North, Dolores Costello, or maybe John Drew Barrymore.

I have provided links to further info on these great stars, whose quality of work inspires us from afar – from far back and faraway.

Most of the actors I cite and applaud were not filmoholics and many were thrust into the limelight by circumstances, birth, beauty, or just by need and expedience.

Beulah Bondi was put upon the stage at 7. Sheree North was just too hot and got enlisted, and her insouciance which is irresistible on film probably would have otherwise taken her elsewhere . ( If anyone knows for sure, I’d love to hear about it at info@filmoholic.com.)
Dolores Costello was born into it but most certainly would have been conscripted into show business for her beauty alone. John Drew Barrymore was born into the most famous acting family in the world. He had no real choice in the matter.

On Films

Touching emotions, wringing feeling out of our otherwise stoical and errand-wasted lives is the primary focus of the arts, and film does it is perhaps the most sensorily full way – far more intimate, I think, than theater, as we’re seated in our darkened movie palaces or in our own living rooms, we actively become participants in this little make-believe world – if – and only if – the performers are deeply into what they’re doing.

Craft is crap, I think. Either an actor is born with a gift or not. It cannot be adequately learned.

The British lot of actors, for instance, are famous for laughing at our stables of method actors and acting schoolees – they retort, if asked, that they simply act.

Preparing for a role is so ludicrous – if anyone’s ever had to witness someone applying “technique” – gearing up for a performance by staying in character, you know what I mean.

The geniuses among us can just walk out anywhere, any time, and be “on”.
Only the lines of dialogue need to be thought out beforehand and meditated upon.

Filmoholic’s Faves

Beulah Bondi

This list of greatness – foremost among them, Beulah Bondi – reminds us how powerfully mesmerizing and compelling an actor can be. Effortless, seamlessly given to becoming everyone from arch-villianess to comedic clown, with romantic queen and staunchly prim grandma types in between, she was also known for the syrupy-sweetnes she could melt audiences with.

Often a character actor – who are they ? Only the very best could fill character roles.
Supporting roles, usually, although Beulah Bondi, in her long career often was both leading actor and character all at once, characters give a great film the very pillars it rests on.

Sometimes the leads, charismatic and beautiful though they might be, depend on the supporting actors for everything, and without them, a film would be robbed of its’ richness, its’ humor, and its’ depth.

All of us, I hope, have seen “The Waltons” episode guest-starring Beulah Bondi. It centered upon Bondi’s late-life character of Martha Corinne Walton, sister-in-law of Grandpa Walton, whose home and property were threatened and then, taken, by the state in order to build a public highway. No one could have created such a haunting portrait of this elderly mountain widow as she had to say a tragic good-bye to the log cabin she’d lived her married life in for over sixty years.

It is powerful acting like this, and beautiful scenes made real by the stellar art direction of old and the greatest of epics filmed in exotic and paroramic locales that draw us mostly into magical realms.

It is to these masters and films that these pages are dedicated in a thank you for the wealth of experience they have bestowed upon us all, and to the wonderful people like Ted Turner who’ve made our film educations possible.

Beulah Bondi Links
Historical Society of Porter County - Beulah Bondi

Beulah Bondi - People - Movies - New York Times

Beulah Bondi

Beulah Bondi at Reel Classics

Sheree North, actress

Among the bombshells of the fifties, there was one whose true vulnerability – in contrast to the affected play-acting of tenderness so well exploited by Marilyn Monroe – and sensitivity was so well explored in film that, although she’s not a house-hold name, she has the distinction of being the only one of that whole sex symbol lot who can really act.

Beautiful, accomplished, and not well-enough celebrated, we’d like to introduce others to the work of this phenomenal actress.

She could play low-brow tramps who’d break your heart and big-city gangster girlfriends better than anyone on earth. She – with those huge brown eyes – could make you cry at every scene, and even her happy scenes were always tinged with a touch of tragedy that made her little girl voice sincere.

No caricature, Sheree North could really deliver on the promise of great acting with great feeling. She’d be cuddly supporting chick most times, and it seems that the powers that were did not understand how to create or to find scripts that would have served her well enough to bring her into the center spotlight that found Monroe and others more easily.

Movies like “Bus Stop”, were made for her, and “Baby Doll” as well as “Golden Boy”.

She could also run the gamut all the way to classy bitch, but always with that sadness in her eyes that always adds a further dimension.

Check out these Sheree North links and rent some DVD’s tonight !

Sheree North - People - Movies - New York Times

Sheree North Pics - Sheree North News - Sheree North Information

Sheree North

Dolores Costello

I especially adore silent films, and of them, the film stars who made them vibrate with charisma. Without the silent movies, we probably would never have had the parade of vamps, tramps, and goddesses who still invoke the power of allure today.
Dolores Costello was definitely of the goddess variety.
Considered by many to be the most beautiful actress of all times in film history, Dolores Costello still works her magic on us even from old publicitystills.

Her elegance and regal air of mystery, her obvious physical grace and those gorgeous eyes took her into the movie business early. She’d been born into a theatrical family and she and her sister started very young.
With such beauty even as children, it was inevitable that someone would suggest, ‘you ought to be in pictures !’
Not now a household name, like Garbo, for instance, her marriage to John Barrymore still has not made her name as famous as it should be.

Dolores and John Barrymore

Her work, when you can find it on Turner Classic Movie Channel, is excellent. She should be better known.

Dolores Costello links

Dolores Costello

Dolores Costello, Silent Movie Star - goldensilents.com

Dolores Costello

Goddess of the Silent Screen

John Drew Barrymore, actor

For a powerful and enigmatic performance, find any of John Drew Barrymore’s films or TV work.

Burdened since birth with the weight of his father’s name and legacy, being the son of the most famous actor in the entire world had to have been tragic, and he found his niche in acting but at a time when filmmaking was undergoing the transformation from big studio to small producer-land, and when TV was starting to cut ground from under the old system.

The film industry never really found the proper place for this gifted actor, and yet his work deserves to be found and applauded.

Sandwiched in between his father, uncle, and aunt’s generation of ultra-famous actors and his daughter, (although at times he claimed they were not really related ), Drew, whether he really wanted to be an actor at all is something we’ll probably never know, but imagine the tyranny of the public’s expectations. Imagine the family’s expectations too.

The fact that he had become a successful force in films is a great credit to his talent.

I’d like to turn you onto some links heralding this great actor here –

John Drew Barrymore Links

John Drew Barrymore dies - Film - www.smh.com.au

John Drew Barrymore

In Remembrance- John Drew Barrymore

Gilbert Roland

A class act.

Virile, handsome, and with a sensual sensitivity that epitomizes the hot Latin lover type, Roland was the love of endless numbers of fans in his many fascinating roles.

His steaminess on the screen makes the modern film actors seem trivial and cardboard by comparison.

“His purring machismo”, as described by Time magazine, brought Roland an enduring Hollywood legacy with such unforgettable parts as the Cisco Kid and the Mexican sidekick in “islands in the stream”, wehrere he played what he was, a Mexican-born macho Hemingway character right out of novels.

His innate sense of style, fiery eyes, and quick humor, plus his engaging smile and especially, his graceful but macho way of moving made him a unique actor. Mercurial and smouldering in equal measures.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,959598-3,00.html

http://www.greta-garbo.de/Greta-Garbo-und-ihre-Autogramme/#gilbert

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0738042/

http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=61196

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/p/gilbert_roland/

http://www.nndb.com/people/613/000109286/

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,959598-3,00.html

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