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Bell Book and Candle


11:45 am - 1:30 pm, Wednesday 30th July on Hollywood Suite 70s+ Movies HDTV ()

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About this Broadcast

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A Manhattan witch falls in love with a publisher after casting a spell on him that obliges him to dump his fiancée and pursue her instead.

1958 English
Comedy Fantasy Romance Adaptation

Cast & Crew

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James Stewart (Actor) .. Shepherd 'Shep' Henderson
Kim Novak (Actor) .. Gillian 'Gil' Holroyd
Jack Lemmon (Actor) .. Nicky Holroyd
Ernie Kovacs (Actor) .. Sidney Redlitch
Hermione Gingold (Actor) .. Bianca de Passe
Elsa Lanchester (Actor) .. Queenie
Janice Rule (Actor) .. Merle Kittridge
Philippe Clay (Actor) .. French Singer
Bek Nelson (Actor) .. Secretary
Howard McNear (Actor) .. Andy White
Wolfe Barzell (Actor) .. Proprietor
Joe Barry (Actor) .. Exterminator
Gail Bonney (Actor) .. Merle's Maid
Monty Ash (Actor) .. Herb Store Owner

More Information

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Did You Know..

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James Stewart (Actor) .. Shepherd 'Shep' Henderson
Born: May 20, 1908 in Indiana, Pennsylvania, United States
Trivia: James Stewart was the movies' quintessential Everyman, a uniquely all-American performer who parlayed his easygoing persona into one of the most successful and enduring careers in film history. On paper, he was anything but the typical Hollywood star: Gawky and tentative, with a pronounced stammer and a folksy "aw-shucks" charm, he lacked the dashing sophistication and swashbuckling heroism endemic among the other major actors of the era. Yet it's precisely the absence of affectation which made Stewart so popular; while so many other great stars seemed remote and larger than life, he never lost touch with his humanity, projecting an uncommon sense of goodness and decency which made him immensely likable and endearing to successive generations of moviegoers.Born May 20, 1908, in Indiana, PA, Stewart began performing magic as a child. While studying civil engineering at Princeton University, he befriended Joshua Logan, who then headed a summer stock company, and appeared in several of his productions. After graduation, Stewart joined Logan's University Players, a troupe whose membership also included Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullavan. He and Fonda traveled to New York City in 1932, where they began winning small roles in Broadway productions including Carrie Nation, Yellow Jack, and Page Miss Glory. On the recommendation of Hedda Hopper, MGM scheduled a screen test, and soon Stewart was signed to a long-term contract. He first appeared onscreen in a bit role in the 1935 Spencer Tracy vehicle The Murder Man, followed by another small performance the next year in Rose Marie.Stewart's first prominent role came courtesy of Sullavan, who requested he play her husband in the 1936 melodrama Next Time We Love. Speed, one of six other films he made that same year, was his first lead role. His next major performance cast him as Eleanor Powell's paramour in the musical Born to Dance, after which he accepted a supporting turn in After the Thin Man. For 1938's classic You Can't Take It With You, Stewart teamed for the first time with Frank Capra, the director who guided him during many of his most memorable performances. They reunited a year later for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stewart's breakthrough picture; a hugely popular modern morality play set against the backdrop of the Washington political system, it cemented the all-American persona which made him so adored by fans, earning a New York Film Critics' Best Actor award as well as his first Oscar nomination.Stewart then embarked on a string of commercial and critical successes which elevated him to the status of superstar; the first was the idiosyncratic 1939 Western Destry Rides Again, followed by the 1940 Ernst Lubitsch romantic comedy The Shop Around the Corner. After The Mortal Storm, he starred opposite Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant in George Cukor's sublime The Philadelphia Story, a performance which earned him the Best Actor Oscar. However, Stewart soon entered duty in World War II, serving as a bomber pilot and flying 20 missions over Germany. He was highly decorated for his courage, and did not fully retire from the service until 1968, by which time he was an Air Force Brigadier General, the highest-ranking entertainer in the U.S. military. Stewart's combat experiences left him a changed man; where during the prewar era he often played shy, tentative characters, he returned to films with a new intensity. While remaining as genial and likable as ever, he began to explore new, more complex facets of his acting abilities, accepting roles in darker and more thought-provoking films. The first was Capra's 1946 perennial It's a Wonderful Life, which cast Stewart as a suicidal banker who learns the true value of life. Through years of TV reruns, the film became a staple of Christmastime viewing, and remains arguably Stewart's best-known and most-beloved performance. However, it was not a hit upon its original theatrical release, nor was the follow-up Magic Town -- audiences clearly wanted the escapist fare of Hollywood's prewar era, not the more pensive material so many other actors and filmmakers as well as Stewart wanted to explore in the wake of battle. The 1948 thriller Call Northside 777 was a concession to audience demands, and fans responded by making the film a considerable hit. Regardless, Stewart next teamed for the first time with Alfred Hitchcock in Rope, accepting a supporting role in a tale based on the infamous Leopold and Loeb murder case. His next few pictures failed to generate much notice, but in 1950, Stewart starred in a pair of Westerns, Anthony Mann's Winchester 73 and Delmer Daves' Broken Arrow. Both were hugely successful, and after completing an Oscar-nominated turn as a drunk in the comedy Harvey and appearing in Cecil B. De Mille's Academy Award-winning The Greatest Show on Earth, he made another Western, 1952's Bend of the River, the first in a decade of many similar genre pieces.Stewart spent the 1950s primarily in the employ of Universal, cutting one of the first percentage-basis contracts in Hollywood -- a major breakthrough soon to be followed by virtually every other motion-picture star. He often worked with director Mann, who guided him to hits including The Naked Spur, Thunder Bay, The Man From Laramie, and The Far Country. For Hitchcock, Stewart starred in 1954's masterful Rear Window, appearing against type as a crippled photographer obsessively peeking in on the lives of his neighbors. More than perhaps any other director, Hitchcock challenged the very assumptions of the Stewart persona by casting him in roles which questioned his character's morality, even his sanity. They reunited twice more, in 1956's The Man Who Knew Too Much and 1958's brilliant Vertigo, and together both director and star rose to the occasion by delivering some of the best work of their respective careers. Apart from Mann and Hitchcock, Stewart also worked with the likes of Billy Wilder (1957's Charles Lindbergh biopic The Spirit of St. Louis) and Otto Preminger (1959's provocative courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder, which earned him yet another Best Actor bid). Under John Ford, Stewart starred in 1961's Two Rode Together and the following year's excellent The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The 1962 comedy Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation was also a hit, and Stewart spent the remainder of the decade alternating between Westerns and family comedies. By the early '70s, he announced his semi-retirement from movies, but still occasionally resurfaced in pictures like the 1976 John Wayne vehicle The Shootist and 1978's The Big Sleep. By the 1980s, Stewart's acting had become even more limited, and he spent much of his final years writing poetry; he died July 2, 1997.
Kim Novak (Actor) .. Gillian 'Gil' Holroyd
Born: February 13, 1933 in Chicago, Illinois, United States
Trivia: Kim Novak was among Hollywood's most enigmatic sex symbols of the '50s and early '60s. Blonde and beautiful, she exuded a daunting intellectual chilliness and an underlying passionate heat that made her especially alluring. One of the last of the studio-made stars, she rebelled against her "manufactured" image, struggling to be seen as more than just another brainless glamour gal. Novak brought to many of her roles a certain melancholic reluctance about freeing up her character's sensuality. It seemed as if her beauty was a burden, not an asset. She was born Marilyn Pauline Novak and raised in Chicago, the daughter of a Czech railroad man. Before she was discovered in Los Angeles by Columbia Pictures helmer Harry Cohn (who chose her as a replacement for his increasingly difficult and rebellious reigning screen goddess Rita Hayworth), Novak worked odd jobs that included sales clerk, elevator operator, and a spokesmodel for a refrigerator company. Cohn signed her to his studio around 1954. While being properly prepared for stardom, Novak engaged in the first of many battles with Cohn when she refused to allow the studio to bill her as "Kit Marlowe." She felt the name rang false and battled to keep her family name, and then compromised by allowing herself to be called Kim because in her mind, Kit was too close to "kitten," as in the sexy kind. In her later years, Novak would acknowledge the studio head's role in her stardom, but also took plenty of credit for her own hard work.Though Novak had already made her screen debut with a tiny role in The French Line (1954), her first starring role for Columbia was playing opposite Fred MacMurray in Pushover (1954). At first, she appeared uncomfortable with acting before cameras, but she soon relaxed and the following year had her first big break in Picnic (1955). The film was a hit and Novak found herself the hottest sex symbol in town, a title she wore with discomfort. Unlike other similar stars, Novak was pragmatic and did not lose herself in the glamour of the studio's carefully manufactured blonde bombshell image of her. Despite her dislike of such publicity chores as providing "cheesecake" shots for the press, and going out on studio arranged "dates" to keep her name in print, she was a trooper and toed the company line; some of her alleged lovers from this period include Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, and Aly Khan.Through the '50s, Novak appeared in a broad range of films of widely varying quality. In 1958, Novak appeared in her most famous role, that of enigmatic Madeleine in Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece Vertigo. It was a difficult role, but one she rose to admirably. She did have one conflict with Hitchcock on the set concerning the stiff gray suit and black shoes she would be required to wear for most of the picture. When she saw costume designer Edith Head's original plans for the suit, Novak, fearing the suit would be distracting and uncomfortable and believing that gray is seldom a blonde's best color, voiced her concerns directly to Hitchcock who listened patiently and then insisted she wear the prescribed garb. Novak obeyed and to her surprise discovered that the starchy outfit enhanced rather than hindered her ability to play Madeleine. Novak's career continued in high gear through 1965. After appearing in The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965) and marrying her second husband, her film appearances became less frequent. After the loss of her Bel Air home to erosion following a bad fire season in the 1970s, Novak retired and moved to Northern California. There, she and her husband, Dr. Robert Malloy, a veterinarian, raised llamas. She continued to appear on television and in feature films, but only when she wanted to. At home on the ranch she spoke of her screen persona "Kim Novak" as if she were a totally different person. In 1997, she dusted off the old persona to go on an extensive promotional tour to alert the public to the fully restored version of Vertigo. When not busy in Hollywood, Novak continues working on her autobiography.
Jack Lemmon (Actor) .. Nicky Holroyd
Born: February 08, 1925 in Newton, MA
Trivia: A private school-educated everyman who could play outrageous comedy and wrenching tragedy, Jack Lemmon burst onto the movie scene as a 1950s Columbia contract player and remained a beloved star until his death in 2001. Whether through humor or pathos, he excelled at illuminating the struggles of average men against a callous world; as director Billy Wilder once noted, "There was a little bit of genius in everything he did." Born in 1925, the son of a Boston doughnut company executive, Lemmon was educated at Phillips Andover Academy and taught himself to play piano as a teen. A budding thespian by the time he entered Harvard, he was elected president of the famed Hasty Pudding Club. After his college career was briefly interrupted by a stint in the Navy at the end of World War II, Lemmon graduated from Harvard and headed to New York to pursue acting. By the early '50s, Lemmon had appeared in hundreds of live TV roles, including in the dramatic series Kraft Television Theater and Robert Montgomery Presents, as well as co-starring with first wife, Cynthia Stone, in two short-lived sitcoms. After Lemmon landed a major role in the 1953 Broadway revival of Room Service, a talent scout for Columbia Pictures convinced the actor to try Hollywood instead. Defying Columbia chief Harry Cohn's demand that he change his last name lest the critics take advantage of it in negative reviews, Lemmon quickly made a positive impression in his first film, the Judy Holliday comic hit It Should Happen to You (1954) and quickly became a reliably nimble comic presence at Columbia. A loan out to Warner Bros. for the smash Mister Roberts (1955), however, truly began to reveal his ability. Drawing on his Navy memories to play the wily Ensign Pulver, Lemmon held his own opposite heavyweights Henry Fonda and James Cagney and won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his fourth film. A free-agent star by the end of the 1950s, he began one of his two most auspicious creative collaborations when writer/director Billy Wilder tapped him to play one of the cross-dressing musicians in the gender-tweaking comic classic Some Like It Hot (1959). As enthusiastically female bull fiddler Daphne to Tony Curtis' preening Lothario sax player Josephine, Lemmon danced a sidesplitting tango with millionaire suitor Joe E. Brown and delivered a sublime speechless reaction to Brown's nonchalant acceptance of his manhood. Fresh off a Best Actor nomination for Hot, he then gave an image-defining performance in Wilder's multiple-Oscar winner The Apartment (1960). As ambitious New York office drone C.C. Baxter, who climbs the corporate ladder by loaning his small one-bedroom to his philandering bosses, Lemmon was both the likeable cynic and beleaguered romantic, perfectly embodying Wilder's sardonic view of a venal world. Lemmon's turn as the put-upon quotidian schnook pervaded the rest of his career. Determined to prove that he could play serious roles as well as comic, Lemmon campaigned to play Lee Remick's alcoholic husband in Blake Edwards' film adaptation of the teleplay Days of Wine and Roses (1962). Revealing the darker side of middle-class desperation, Lemmon earned still more critical kudos and another Oscar nomination. Despite this triumph, he returned to comedy, re-teaming with Wilder and The Apartment co-star Shirley MacLaine in Irma la Douce (1963). Though the love story between a Parisian prostitute and a cop-turned-lover in disguise was a lesser effort, Irma la Douce became a major hit for the trio. Continuing to display his skill at offsetting his characters' unseemly behavior with his innate, ordinary-guy affability, Lemmon's mid-'60s comic roles included a lascivious landlord in Under the Yum Yum Tree (1963) and a homicidal husband in How to Murder Your Wife (1965). Lemmon began his second legendary creative partnership when Wilder cast Walter Matthau opposite him in The Fortune Cookie (1966). The duo's popularity was cemented when they re-teamed for the hit film version of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple (1968). Despite his genuine pathos as suicidal, anal-retentive divorcé Felix Unger, Lemmon still managed to evoke great hilarity with Felix's technique for clearing his sinuses, becoming a superbly neurotic foil to Matthau's very casual Oscar Madison. Matthau subsequently starred in Kotch (1971), Lemmon's sole directorial effort, and Lemmon appeared in scion Charles Matthau's The Grass Harp (1995). Lemmon and Matthau also fittingly co-starred in Wilder's final film, Buddy Buddy (1981). After starring in The Out-of-Towners (1970) and Avanti! (1972), Lemmon took minimal salary in order to play a disillusioned middle-aged businessman in the drama Save the Tiger (1973). Though the film did little business, Lemmon finally won the Best Actor Oscar that had eluded him for over a decade and moved easily between comedy and drama from then on. As in The Odd Couple, he marshaled both humor and gloom for his portrayal of an unemployed, despondent gray flannel suit executive in Neil Simon's The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1972). His reunion with Wilder and Matthau for another screen version of the fast-talking newspaperman comedy The Front Page (1974), however, was strictly for laughs. Working less frequently in films in the mid-'70s, Lemmon managed to retain his status as one of the best actors in the business with his passionate turn as a conscience-stricken nuclear power plant executive in the prescient drama The China Syndrome (1979). Along with the Best Actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Lemmon also earned an Oscar nomination for Syndrome. He received another Oscar nod when he reprised his 1978 Tony-nominated performance as a dying press agent in the film version of Tribute (1980). Lemmon continued to push himself as an actor throughout the 1980s and 1990s. As an anguished father who seeks the truth about his son's disappearance in Constantin Costa-Gavras' politically charged Missing (1982), he repeated his Cannes win and Oscar nomination diptych. In 1986, Lemmon returned to Broadway in the challenging role of wretched patriarch James Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night. Though critics began voicing their doubts after such films as Dad (1989), Lemmon offset his affection for sentiment in the early '90s with vivid performances as a slightly seedy character in JFK (1991), a fading, high-strung real estate agent in David Mamet's harsh Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), and a truant father in Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993). Lemmon proved that older actors could still draw crowds when he co-starred with Matthau as warring neighbors in the hit comedy Grumpy Old Men (1993) and the imaginatively titled sequel Grumpier Old Men (1995). The two concluded their decades-long, perennially appealing odd couple act with Out to Sea (1997) and The Odd Couple II (1998). Along with gathering such lifetime laurels as the Kennedy Center Honors and the Screen Actors' Guild trophy, Lemmon also continued to win nominations and awards for his work in such TV dramas as the 1997 version of 12 Angry Men (inspiring Golden Globe rival Ving Rhames to famously surrender his prize to Lemmon) and Inherit the Wind (1999). Lemmon's Emmy-worthy turn as a serenely wise dying professor in Tuesdays With Morrie proved to be his final major role and an appropriate end to his stellar career. One year after longtime friend Matthau passed away in July 2000, Lemmon succumbed to cancer on June 27, 2001. He was survived by his second wife, Felicia Farr (whom he married in 1962), and his two children.
Ernie Kovacs (Actor) .. Sidney Redlitch
Born: January 23, 1919 in Trenton, New Jersey, United States
Trivia: A certified comic genius, Ernie Kovacs' great accomplishments lay in his sublimely creative, way-ahead-of-its-time television work; he was seldom shown to best advantage in films. Born in New Jersey to Hungarian immigrants, Kovacs was an unremarkable student, though he excelled in high school theatricals. A serious bout with pleurisy ended his training at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After working with a ragtag theatrical troupe, Kovacs attained his first radio work as an announcer for Trenton's WTTM. As the station's director of special events, the mustachioed, cigar-smoking Kovacs gained a fan following by staging such zany events as lying on a railroad track as a train approached, informing the listeners at home how it felt to be so close to death! He inaugurated his television career at Philadelphia's WPTZ in 1950, where he stretched the limits of the primitive medium with wild sketches, nonsequitur sight gags and trick photography. He carried this innovative spirit into his first network program, 1952's Kovacs Unlimited. Though none of his subsequent TV projects ever achieved the high ratings that they deserved, Kovacs was the object of an intense cult worship, comprised mostly of people who were sick to death of boob-tube banality and who thrived on Kovacs' willingness to experiment. In 1954, Kovacs married singer Edie Adams, who frequently starred in his TV endeavors; she also assisted him in his feverish efforts to reclaim his two children from a previous marriage who'd been kidnapped by wife number one. While generally master of his own domain on television, Kovacs was at the mercy of Hollywood typecasting when he began his film career with Operation Mad Ball (1957). He portrayed so many obnoxious Army officers that at one point he took out a trade paper ad, imploring "No More Captains--Please." His own favorite film was the offbeat Five Golden Hours (1961), in which he portrayed a larcenous professional mourner who meets his match in professional widow Cyd Charisse. After completing his last film, Sail a Crooked Ship (1961), Kovacs concentrated his efforts on his ABC-TV monthly specials, wherein he transformed the running gag into an art form, brought inanimate objects to life, "visualized" the musical compositions of Beethoven, Stravinsky and Mahler, and hawked Dutch Masters cigars between the acts. The audacious brilliance of Ernie Kovacs came to an abrupt, tragic end when he was killed in an auto accident at the age of 42.
Hermione Gingold (Actor) .. Bianca de Passe
Born: December 09, 1897
Trivia: On stage from the age of 10 (in a production of Pinkie and the Fairies), British actress Hermione Gingold studied for her craft under famed instructor Rosinna Filippi. Gingold's subsequent stage career was almost exclusively devoted to the classics, particularly Shakespeare. Nearing 40, Gingold switched professional gears to become a singing comedienne, appearing in such West End revues as Sweet and Low, Sweeter and Lower and Sweetest and Lowest. Appearing on Broadway in the 1952 edition of John Murray Anderson's Almanac, Gingold held off making any American films (though she'd been in British pictures since 1934), until she was flattered by produced Mike Todd into playing a cameo role as a London tart in Todd's cinema spectacular Around the World in 80 Days (1956). Delightfully inhibited and doggedly aristocratic all at once, Gingold continued her U.S. film career in a number of eccentric roles; in Gigi (1958), she shared the poignant song "I Remember it Well" with Maurice Chevalier. The actress also blessed American TV with her talents; in a 1960 Mother's Day special she portrayed the mother of The Three Stooges! Gracing such films as Bell, Book and Candle (1962), The Music Man (1962) and even Munster Go Home (1965) with her regally ribald presence, Hermione Gingold was still at her post in the '70s, as sparkling as ever in the otherwise forgettable A Little Night Music (1976).
Elsa Lanchester (Actor) .. Queenie
Born: October 28, 1902
Trivia: Eccentric, high-voiced British comedienne/actress Elsa Lanchester started her career as a modern dancer, appearing with Isadora Duncan. Lanchester can be seen bringing unique and usually humorous interpretations to roles in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), opposite husband Charles Laughton; The Bride of Frankenstein (1934), where she appears both as a subdued Mary Shelley and a hissing bride; David Copperfield and Naughty Marietta (both 1935); Tales of Manhattan (1942) and Forever and a Day (1943), both with Laughton; Lassie Come Home (1943), in which she is unusually subdued as the mother; The Bishop's Wife (1947); The Inspector General and The Secret Garden (1949); and Come to the Stable (1949), for which she was nominated for an Oscar. She and Laughton are riotous together in Witness for the Prosecution (1957), for which she was also Oscar-nominated, and she also appeared in Bell, Book and Candle (1958) and the Disney films Mary Poppins (1964), as the departing nanny Katie Nanna, and in That Darn Cat (1965). One of her best late performances was in Murder by Death (1976). Lanchester was also an actress at London's Old Vic, an outlandish singer, and a nightclub performer; she co-starred on The John Forsythe Show (1965-66), and was a regular on Nanny and the Professor in 1971.
Janice Rule (Actor) .. Merle Kittridge
Born: August 15, 1931
Trivia: A former showgirl and nightclub singer, Janice Rule was signed to a Warner Bros. contract in 1951. It would be nearly ten years before Rule's truly worthwhile roles would outnumber her inconsequential parts. She all but cornered the market in bitter, neurotic socialites in the 1960s, playing such parts as the small-town wealthy shrew who drunkenly swallows a string of valuable pearls in The Chase (1966) and Burt Lancaster's vitriolic ex-mistress in The Swimmer (1968). Playing these profoundly disturbed screen characters must have been cathartic for Ms. Rule, who took time off from acting in the late 1970s to become a professional psychoanalyst. From 1961 through 1979, Janice Rule was married to actor Ben Gazzara.
Philippe Clay (Actor) .. French Singer
Born: March 07, 1927
Bek Nelson (Actor) .. Secretary
Born: May 08, 1927
Howard McNear (Actor) .. Andy White
Born: January 22, 1905
Trivia: Character actor Howard McNear made a name for himself on network radio in a vast array of characterizations, from snivelling murderers to dapper French detectives. McNear's best-known radio role was as Doc on Gunsmoke, which ran from 1955 to 1962; his spin on the character was slightly more ghoulish than the interpretation offered by Milburn Stone on television. In films from 1954, the bespectacled, mustachioed McNear was usually cast as a querulous fussbudget. He was spotlighted as Dr. Dompierre in Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (1959), and was prominently featured in three Billy Wilder comedies, Irma La Douce (1963), Kiss Me Stupid (1964) and The Fortune Cookie (1966). He appeared with frequency on TV in the 1950s and 1960s, often as a foil to such comedians as Jack Benny and Burns and Allen. Howard McNear's most beloved TV characterization was as Mayberry barber Floyd Lawson on The Andy Griffith Show; when McNear suffered a debilitating stroke in 1967, Griffith kept him on the payroll, re-writing the scripts to allow "Floyd" to be seated and non-ambulatory without drawing undue attention to McNear's affliction.
Wolfe Barzell (Actor) .. Proprietor
Born: January 01, 1896
Joe Barry (Actor) .. Exterminator
Gail Bonney (Actor) .. Merle's Maid
Born: January 01, 1900
Monty Ash (Actor) .. Herb Store Owner
Born: January 28, 1909

Before / After

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Being Julia
09:55 am