Word: actorly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
William Haines was not a very good actor, but he was a very popular one, and in Hollywood of the 1920s the priorities were the same as those of Hollywood today--it's the box office that counts. Haines is one of the now-forgotten stars of the silent screen: handsome, witty and good-natured, between 1926 and 1931 he was one of the biggest box-office draws in Hollywood, top on MGM's roster of stars and adored by women film fans everywhere. Specializing in playing the role of the "wisecracker," a joking, likable trickster hero who starts...
Awarding senior All-American Allison Feaster The Crimson's Athlete of the Week is a bit like giving an Oscar-winning actor the Hasty Pudding Award. What more can you say about a woman who sparked one of the greatest upsets in the history of college basketball? How can words give justice to an athlete who has vaulted Harvard women's basketball into the national spotlight and earned respect for a school that rarely gets taken seriously in the world of college athletics...
There were whispers that after a White House conversation with Travolta, Clinton put pressure on Germany to soften its stance toward the Church of Scientology, of which the actor is an outspoken adherent, and that in return Travolta portrayed Stanton more sympathetically. That rumor gets a sneer from Klein ("I don't think Clinton would change policy toward Germany to get better treatment from John Travolta"), but the actor has warm memories of the chat, in which he says Clinton spoke of an old roommate who had been a Scientologist. Travolta insists his performance wasn't swayed by the President...
Watching Travolta warmly embrace fans or chat up elderly extras on the set, it's clear he works "that great p.r. thing" as well as Clinton does. "John has a need for people, and you can feel it," says director Mike Nichols. But that's not all the actor and the President have in common. Both have answered prying questions about their private lives and sexual habits. And both know how to assuage their critics with roguish charm, cracking a humble aw-shucks smile or touching a stranger's arm to spark a personal connection...
...American politics. When Mr. Smith went to Washington in 1939, he found Gomorrah. But the President, whether real or fictional, used to get gentler handling. In 1942's Yankee Doodle Dandy, when George M. Cohan, played by James Cagney, meets Franklin D. Roosevelt, the President was played by an actor, seen largely from behind, who sounded so mature and wise that he might as well have been Moses. Two decades later, in Sunrise at Campobello, there is Roosevelt again, this time played by Ralph Bellamy as the last word in ripening decencies. Nobody in those days thought of making...