Word: mgm
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Died. Don Loper, 66, designer of celebrity wardrobes; in Santa Monica, Calif. Loper went to Hollywood in the early '40s to co-produce and dance in the Ginger Rogers movie Lady in the Dark. At MGM he enjoyed a seven-way contract that made him dancer, choreographer, costume designer, set designer, producer, director and actor. He later opened a Sunset Strip couture house from which he clothed some of Hollywood's most famous women-including Marlene Dietrich, Lana Turner, Claudette Colbert-for prices up to $25,000 a dress...
...MGM-produced Shaft films are illustrative. John Shaft, a black private detective who enforces the laws that repress much of the black community, is rewarded for his efforts with a fabulous penthouse, beautiful women, and lots of money. Serious black activists who are desperately trying to help the community, however, are portrayed as brash and fumbling idiots who live in coldwater walk-up tenements. The message is clear: be a self-centered hustler and maybe one day you can move to Park Avenue: deal seriously with the struggle for liberation and you are condemned to the ghetto...
...fluke. I attended the first screening of Boorman's previous film open to anyone outside of MGM brass. Boorman was there. A young, very intelligent and open man, he confessed what he felt were his own limits, saying that he'd blown apart some of his films in desperate attempts transcend story, his hope was to find a situation which could be developed in cinematic terms as cleanly as possible, with little expository verbiage and much complexity of image. At least in technique. Deliverance is the film he's been working towards. You can take any one of his frames...
...been feeding on music. When his father had friends in for chamber music, Andre sat under the piano and listened. Later he got up and sat at the keyboard, learning to play symphonies in piano transcriptions. He also studied composing and conducting. At 16, he was scoring at MGM-with starlets as well as music. With his second wife Dory, he wrote pop hits. He collected Oscars and money...
...Franklin, 79, Hollywood producer and director, whose 1942 production of Mrs. Miniver won an Academy Award for best picture; in Santa Monica, Calif. Franklin began as an actor in D.W. Griffith silent movies, then took a job behind the lens as an assistant cameraman. Ultimately, he became one of MGM's most successful directors (The Good Earth, The Barretts of Wimpole Street...