Paul Stewart
1908 - 1986Born Paul Sternberg in New York City, Stewart graduated from Columbia University and made his Broadway theatre debut in the play Two Seconds in 1931. A few years later he met Orson Welles, who invited him to join the Mercury Theatre, where he participated in the notorious 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds. He was a founding member of AFTRA.
Sternberg's many screen credits include Citizen Kane, Twelve O'Clock High, Champion, Kiss Me Deadly, The Bad and the Beautiful, In Cold Blood, The Day of the Locust, S.O.B., and W.C. Fields and Me, in which he portrayed Florenz Ziegfeld. On television, he appeared in Playhouse 90, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Alcoa Theatre, Dr. Kildare, Wagon Train, Gunsmoke, It Takes a Thief, Mannix, The Name of the Game, McMillan & Wife, Mission Impossible,The Rockford Files, Lou Grant, and Remington Steele, among many others. He also directed some television episodes, among them "Little Girl Lost", from the Twilight Zone.
Stewart was married to big band singer/actress Peg La Centra from 1939 until his death from a heart attack in Los Angeles at age 77. He was characterized in the 1999 television movie RKO 281.
Citizen Kane
Orson Welles
Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten
Newspaper magnate, Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.
Citizen Kane
Opening Night
John Cassavetes
Gena Rowlands, John Cassavetes
Actress Myrtle Gordon is a functioning alcoholic who is a few days from the opening night of her latest play, concerning a woman distraught about aging. One night a car kills one of Myrtle's fans who is chasing her limousine in an attempt to get the star's attention. Myrtle internalizes the accident and goes on a spiritual quest, but fails to finds the answers she is after. As opening night inches closer and closer, fragile Myrtle must find a way to make the show go on.
Opening Night
Citizen Kane Trailer
Orson Welles
Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten
The Citizen Kane Trailer is a four-minute, self-contained "making-of" featurette, released in 1940 to promote the feature film Citizen Kane. Unlike standard theatrical trailers of the era, it did not feature any footage of the actual film itself, but was instead a wholly original pseudo-documentary (considered by numerous film scholars such as Simon Callow, Joseph McBride and Jonathan Rosenbaum to be a standalone short film). In future works, Welles would build off this faux-documentary framework.
Citizen Kane Trailer
Vérités et Mensonges
Orson Welles
Orson Welles, Elmyr de Hory
Documents the lives of infamous fakers Elmyr de Hory and Clifford Irving. De Hory, who later committed suicide to avoid more prison time, made his name by selling forged works of art by painters like Picasso and Matisse. Irving was infamous for writing a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes. Welles moves between documentary and fiction as he examines the fundamental elements of fraud and the people who commit fraud at the expense of others.
F for Fake
Twelve O'Clock High
Henry King
Gregory Peck, Hugh Marlowe
In the early days of daylight bombing raids over Germany, General Frank Savage must take command of a 'hard luck' bomber group. Much of the story deals with his struggle to whip his group into a disciplined fighting unit in spite of heavy losses, and withering attacks by German fighters over their targets.
Twelve O'Clock High
The Bad and the Beautiful
Vincente Minnelli
Lana Turner, Kirk Douglas
Told in flashback form, the film traces the rise and fall of a tough, ambitious Hollywood producer, Jonathan Shields, as seen through the eyes of various acquaintances, including a writer, James Lee Bartlow; a star, Georgia Lorrison; and a director, Fred Amiel. He is a hard-driving, ambitious man who ruthlessly uses everyone on the way to becoming one of Hollywood's top movie makers.
The Bad and the Beautiful
Kiss Me Deadly
Robert Aldrich
Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker
One evening, Hammer gives a ride to Christina, an attractive hitchhiker on a lonely country road, who has escaped from the nearby lunatic asylum. Thugs waylay them and force his car to crash. When Hammer returns to semi-consciousness, he hears Christina being tortured until she dies. Hammer, both for vengeance and in hopes that "something big" is behind it all, decides to pursue the case.
Kiss Me Deadly
The Window
Ted Tetzlaff
Bobby Driscoll, Barbara Hale
An imaginative boy who frequently makes things up witnesses a murder, but can't get his parents or the police to believe him. The only people taking him seriously are the killers - who live upstairs, know that he saw what they did, and are out to permanently silence him.
The Window
A Child Is Waiting
John Cassavetes
Burt Lancaster, Judy Garland
Dr. Matthew Clark is the head of a state institution for intellectually disabled children. Jean Hansen, a former music teacher anxious to give her life some meaning, joins the staff of the hospital. Jean, who tries to shelter the children with her love, suspiciously regards Dr. Clark's stern training methods. She becomes emotionally involved with 12-year-old Reuben Widdicombe, who has been abandoned by his divorced parents.
A Child Is Waiting
King Creole
Michael Curtiz
Elvis Presley, Carolyn Jones
Danny Fisher, young delinquent, flunks out of high school. He quits his job as a busboy in a nightclub, and one night he gets the chance to perform. Success is imminent and the local crime boss Maxie Fields wants to hire him to perform at his night club The Blue Shade. Danny refuses, but Fields won't take no for an answer.
King Creole
