Word: oberon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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DIED. Merle Oberon, 68, arrestingly beautiful cinemactress who rose to fame in the '30s and '40s in such classics as Wuthering Heights and The Scarlet Pimpernel; after a stroke; in Los Angeles. Oberon was born Estelle Merle O'Brien Thompson on the island of Tasmania. Educated in India, she left for England in 1928, worked as an extra and dance hostess until she met and married Film Producer Alexander Korda. Her 1933 portrayal of Anne Boleyn in The Private Life of Henry VIII made her a star. Divorcing Korda in 1945, she went on to play such...
...final cut, or editing, that most crucial of Hollywood privileges. If it belongs to the producer or the studio head, the director is outclimaxed. William Wyler, for example, directed Wuthering Heights for Samuel Goldwyn in 1939, closing the film with both main characters, Heathcliff (Laurence Olivier) and Catherine (Merle Oberon), dead. Such a somber ending greatly disturbed Goldwyn, and he asked Wyler to insert a brief clip of the two lovers in heaven. The director firmly refused. Thus it was a stunned Wyler who attended the premiere and watched Heathcliff and Catherine strolling amid cottony clouds just before the lights...
...forces of drink. Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant, Katerine Hepburn turns in one of the most wonderful performances of her career. George Cukor skillfully directed this film version of the modern Midsummer Night's Dream that saved the National Theater Guild from bankruptcy. Grant is perfect in his Oberon role, masterfully elliptical and indirect. Ditto Jimmy Steward as the ingeneuous Bottom character. The supporting cast also turns in a series of virtuoso performances, making The Philadelphia Story a tour de force of romantic comedy...
...scenes that follow--the introduction of Puck, the quarrel of Titania and Oberon, and the bumbling of five Athenian workmen rehearsing a play in the woods--are gems of acting and direction. In fact, the acting in this production is without exception good. Dan Breslin gives an outstanding performance as the hyperenergetic, cackling Puck, flawlessly capturing the playful and devilish facets of Puck's mischief. Teresa Barger as Hermia and Joanna Blum as Helena are very much the respectively sought-after and frustrated lovers, and vice-versa. Anne B. Clarke as Titania fairly wafts across the stage. Tim Reuben...
...COSTUMES are colorful, and the makeup is original and eye-catching (particularly for Oberon). The sparse set, consisting of a parallelepiped with a net draped diagonally through it, is used imaginatively throughout the play...