Misty Rowe in Goodbye, Norma Jean (1976), a disrespected, low-budget film about the beginning of Marilyn Monroe’s career. (2.9 at IMDb)

That’s pretty much a typical IMDb rating in the career of auteur Larry Buchanan, who directed 12 films rated below 4.0 at IMDb. He made another, even worse Marilyn Monroe film about a decade later (Goodnight, Sweet Marilyn) which used footage from this one in telling about the end of MM’s career.

When Buchanan died in 2004, the NY Times obit read, “One quality united Mr. Buchanan’s diverse output: It was not so much that his films were bad; they were deeply, dazzlingly, unrepentantly bad. His work called to mind a famous line from H.L. Mencken, who, describing President Warren G. Harding’s prose, said, ‘It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it.’”

A former champion of the quiz show “Twenty-One,” Stempel blew the whistle on that rigged competition, leading to exposure of the entire crooked game-show industry in the 50s. Much of America watched Stempel’s winning streak end with a loss to Charles van Doren in 1956, but the entire scenario turned out to have been scripted. Even the prize money was fake. Stempel had allegedly won $69,500 on the broadcasts, but that was all for show. He agreed to accept a lower amount as part of his negotiations with the show’s producers.

He might have been hailed as a hero for having exposed corruption, but was not, because his confession was a matter of revenge rather than conscience. The producers had made some promises to him as part of a crooked bargain which required him to miss a question intentionally. Those promises were not kept, so Stempel went public.

After the scandal, Stempel lived a quiet life in modest circumstances, basically forgotten until the early 90s, when Robert Redford decided to make a movie about the quiz show scandals. Stempel was portrayed by John Turturro in that film (“Quiz Show”), which brought him new fame, but pigeon-holed him as a hapless nerd.

From her appearance, I’m going to guess that she is related neither to Guillermo

nor Benicio

Either that or she is the only non-goblin in the extended Del Toro family.

By the way, to be fair, Benicio used to be very handsome, but aged poorly.

On the other hand, I’m pretty sure Guillermo always looked like he should be pursued by villagers with torches and pitchforks. In fact he looks better now than when he was young. But I do love many of his films!

The offbeat artist created fascinating, ephemeral projects around the world.

“I think it takes much greater courage to create things to be gone than to create things that will remain.”

Unknown to many, he was actually Mexican and his first name was Jesus.

Nah, I’m fuckin’ witcha. He was Bulgarian, and Christo was actually his first name. Wikipedia has quite a good entry on the projects he did with his wife.