Day: October 11, 2022

R.I.P. Angela Lansbury

UncleScoopy

Tragically gunned down in a drive-by shooting while participating in extreme inline skating in the ‘hood.

OK, maybe not.

Wait a sec.

Angela Lansbury was still alive?

Was anyone ever an old lady longer? Elvis would be 87 if he were still alive – and Angela Lansbury played his mom in Blue Hawaii. That was in 1961, and Elvis was certainly old enough then to be a dad (26). The very next year she played Laurence Harvey’s mother in The Manchurian Candidate. Harvey was 33 or 34 at the time, and would be 94 if alive today! So Angela ended up playing women of granny age for about 60 years. That has to be some kind of a record.

Surely she must have looked young once, but there was no photography then, and not even paint. The only images were those early cave drawings. All we know about her youth is that she must have been quite cold in the area now called England because mankind had not yet learned to create fire. Of course it’s not easy to create her biography from those days before written languages, but from the whispers and legends that have come down through the ages, Variety has given it a try.

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Of course there really are photos of her in her late teens. Here she is at 18 or 19, doing some kind of event to promote Gaslight, in which she played Charles Boyer’s mom.

Oh, I’m kidding about the Boyer thing. She didn’t play his mom. He was already in his mid-40s and she was in her late teens, but she already looked mature in this actual scene with Boyer. From this angle, she resembled Bernadette Peters.

Revisiting Charlize Theron in a topless scene that you’ve never seen …

UncleScoopy

… unless you read Other Crap and the Fun House.

If you follow this page and others dedicated to film nudity, you have certainly seen some lovely captures of Charlize Theron’s butt in The Cider House Rules.


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But what you may not realize (unless you are a member at the Fun House) is that there was an earlier version of this scene which included lengthy topless exposure. To my knowledge, this variation has never appeared as “deleted footage” or “alternate footage” on any DVD or Blu-Ray. It is one of the rarest items in my collection. The quality is not good.


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My collages appeared in the Fun House on the page from March 27, 2000, and a single frame (from somebody else, I think) appeared on March 12.

The well-known film critic, James Berardinelli, wrote:

“The topless version of the Cider House Rules scene was in the version that was shown at the Toronto Film Festival in September 1999. It was subsequently re-edited to achieve a PG-13 rating for its theatrical release. To my knowledge, there was only a single print struck with the full scene so, somehow, you have footage from it. It was likely made internally at the studio or at the festival. It likely no longer exists except possibly in a private collection.”

Somebody must have made a bootleg cam recording at the Toronto screening, and I somehow stumbled over it, probably on an IRC channel, way back in the year 2000.

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Find three other rare nude scenes here. They are Pier Angeli in Addio, Alexandra; Rebecca Romijn in the original version of Godsend; and Sienna Miller in a film that was never completed, Hippie, Hippie Shake.