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	<title> &#187; Romantic Comedy</title>
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		<title>Sandra Bullock</title>
		<link>http://finemoviesonline.net/mag/sandra-bullock</link>
		<comments>http://finemoviesonline.net/mag/sandra-bullock#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Nov 2010 15:31:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Moovy</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Actor Profile]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Sandra Bullock]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[American actress who rose to fame in the 1990s.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img src="http://finemoviesonline.net/wp-content/images/sandra1.jpg" alt="Sandra Bullock" width="150" style="float:left" /><br />
One of the top-grossing Hollywood actresses of the 1990s, &#8220;America&#8217;s sweetheart&#8221; Sandra Bullock rose to fame with roles as the quintessential yet modern-day version of the girl-next-door &#8211; smart, capable, witty; one who triumphs in the face of impossible scenarios. Her can-do energy was at the center of her career breakout as Annie, the spunky passenger on a runaway bus in &#8220;Speed&#8221; (1994), after which her endearing gutsiness and charm made her a romantic comedy favorite in films like &#8220;While You Were Sleeping&#8221; (1995) and &#8220;Forces of Nature&#8221; (1999). At her peak, she was so beloved that she gave even Julia Roberts a run for her money as box office queen. To prove her versatility, Bullock regularly detoured into serious dramas like &#8220;Infamous&#8221; (2006) and the occasional edge-of-your seat thriller like &#8220;Premonition&#8221; (2007). But with the exception of the Academy Award-winning &#8220;Crash&#8221; (2002) and her Oscar-winning turn in &#8220;The Blind Side&#8221; (2009), the actress attracted the most fan devotion for sparkling in comedies like &#8220;Miss Congeniality&#8221; (2002) and &#8220;The Proposal&#8221; (2009), where she lit up the screen with her quirky personality and earthy, approachable beauty.</p>
<p>Bullock was born July 26, 1964 in Arlington, VA. As the daughter of a German opera singer mother and a voice coach father, Bullock was raised around show business, often joining her mother on concert tours of Europe from the time she was very young. She spent most of her pre-teen years in Nuremburg, Germany, where she sang with a children&#8217;s choir. By the time the family settled outside Washington, D.C., the teenage Bullock &#8211; with her outgoing, vibrant, personality &#8211; leaned more towards acting. She studied at East Carolina University&#8217;s drama department in Greenville before moving to New York City to study with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse in 1986. A well-reviewed off-Broadway performance in 1988 helped Bullock secure an agent and begin her screen career in supporting parts for TV movies like &#8220;Bionic Showdown: The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman&#8221; (NBC, 1989) and &#8220;The Preppie Murder&#8221; (ABC, 1989). After snagging her first lead role in the small indie &#8220;Who Shot Patakango?&#8221; (1989), Bullock&#8217;s career began to excel and she moved to Los Angeles.</p>
<p>Ironically, Bullock&#8217;s first major acting gig in Los Angeles was a starring role as ambitious young executive Tess McGill in the New York-set sitcom, &#8220;Working Girl&#8221; (NBC, 1990), based on the popular film starring Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford. She co-starred opposite Tate Donovan in the romantic comedy &#8220;Love Potion No. 9&#8243; (1992) and delivered a superb performance as a cynical feminist artist in the indie film &#8220;When the Party&#8217;s Over&#8221; (1992) before getting her first major exposure with &#8220;Demolition Man&#8221; (1993). Bullock turned heads with her supporting role as a feisty LAPD lieutenant and partner of Sylvester Stallone in the dystopian actioner before turning around to give a lesser-seen but thoroughly charming supporting performance as a quirky Southern belle trying to make it in Nashville in Peter Bogdanovich&#8217;s &#8220;The Thing Called Love&#8221; (1993). </p>
<p><img src="http://finemoviesonline.net/wp-content/images/sandra2.jpg" width="580" alt="Sandra Bullock" style="float:left" /></p>
<p>But Bullock&#8217;s first taste of movie stardom came with the blockbuster &#8220;Speed&#8221; (1994), in which she played Annie, the reluctant but plucky driver of a runaway bus opposite Keanu Reeves. Her innate wit, intelligence and general likeability helped elevate what could have been just a standard testosterone-fueled action picture, allowing her to drive off with the film&#8217;s best notices. Her palpable on-screen chemistry with the handsome but stoic leading man also served her well, as both she and Reeves became a kind of a screen couple ideal in filmgoers&#8217; minds &#8211; much like Julia Roberts and Richard Gere had four years before with &#8220;Pretty Woman&#8221; (1990). And like that coupling, it would take years for Reeves and Bullock to reunite on-screen, but fans would never forget their magnetism together.</p>
<p>In a part originally intended for the overpriced Demi Moore, Bullock headlined the romantic comedy &#8220;While You Were Sleeping&#8221; (1995), earning a Golden Globe nomination for portraying another &#8220;regular gal with big dreams&#8221; in the surprise hit co-starring Bill Pullman and Peter Gallagher as the other points of a love triangle. Now a full-fledged movie star with a run of hits, she was equally adept as a hapless computer operator stumbling onto a major conspiracy in the thriller &#8220;The Net&#8221; (1995). Bullock rebounded from the pallid caper comedy &#8220;Two If By Sea&#8221; (1996) with a dramatic supporting turn as a law student who finds herself attracted to a married Southern lawyer (Matthew McConaughey) she is assisting in Joel Schumacher&#8217;s &#8220;A Time to Kill&#8221; (1996), based on the John Grisham bestseller. While she and McConaughey became fast and lasting friends, both denied endless speculation of a romantic relationship. Canoodling tabloid photos surfacing at the time seemed to indicate the opposite, but there was no doubt the two were together on and off for years.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Richard Attenborough&#8217;s &#8220;In Love and War&#8221; (1996), based on the real-life romance between author Ernest Hemingway (Chris O&#8217;Donnell) and the nurse he fictionalized in A Farewell to Arms proved a disappointment, with the actress miscast as the slightly older woman. Equally disappointing was the inevitable &#8211; and ultimately misguided &#8211; sequel, &#8220;Speed 2: Cruise Control&#8221; (1997), which teamed Bullock with Jason Patric on a luxury liner taken over by a madman. The absence of Reeves only served to sink the bloated project even further. Despite the high-profile disaster, Bullock was hardly blamed, as she continued to earn a reputation as a fun-loving type who did not suffer fools gladly. Her mixture of brazenness and caginess only served to warm the hearts of audiences who seemed to forgive her anything. She further entrenched herself in Hollywood &#8211; by way of her adopted home of Austin, TX &#8211; by writing, producing, directing and co-starring opposite co-producer McConaughey in &#8220;Making Sandwiches&#8221; (1997), a 40-minute short screened at the Sundance Film Festival. As executive producer of the romantic drama &#8220;Hope Floats&#8221; (1998), she proved she had an eye for the type of Everywoman roles that had earned her kudos in the past, but with an eye toward deepening her appeal with more risky roles for the future. On the power of her name alone, the forgettable drama generated respectable box office receipts.</p>
<p>Later that year, Bullock lent her voice to the character of Miriam in DreamWorks animated biblical tale &#8220;The Prince of Egypt&#8221; and co-starred with Nicole Kidman as sisters who use witchcraft to solve their romantic problems in &#8220;Practical Magic,&#8221; which she also co-executive produced. Bullock teamed with Ben Affleck in the successful romantic road comedy &#8220;Forces of Nature&#8221; (1999), but her producing efforts misfired with &#8220;Gun Shy&#8221; (2000). Neither she nor her co-star Liam Neeson could save the awkward and unfunny crime comedy. She returned to form later that year as a New York writer and party girl sentenced to &#8220;28 Days&#8221; (2000) of rehab, capably portraying both the hard-to-watch human weakness as well as humor of her addict characterization. Under her Fortis Productions banner, Bullock found time to launch the successful sitcom &#8220;George Lopez&#8221; in 2002, serving as the series executive producer after discovering Lopez in 2000. She was concerned about the lack of Hispanic-oriented sitcoms on American television and pushed to get a show on air starring Hispanics without being exclusively about their ethnicity. The show was a huge success for everyone involved and enjoyed a five year run. Back on the big screen, she impressed moviegoers with a turn as a tomboyish streetwise FBI agent posing as a polished beauty queen in the hit comedy &#8220;Miss Congeniality&#8221; (2002). Paired with Benjamin Bratt, Bullock further proved a delightful comedienne, flaunting her character&#8217;s newfound grace with the appropriate gracelessness and earning another Golden Globe nomination in the process.</p>
<p>Playing a different type of law enforcement agent, Bullock starred as a homicide detective in the psychological thriller &#8220;Murder by Numbers&#8221; (2002) and returned to lighter fare as a Southern playwright in the film adaptation of the bestseller &#8220;Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood&#8221; (2002). She next went back to her romantic comedy roots, producing and starring with Hugh Grant in the underwhelming &#8220;Two Weeks Notice&#8221; (2002) as the aide-de-camp to a reckless mogul who does not appreciate the doting care she gives him. At this point in her career, Bullock was entering dangerous Doris Day territory, playing winsome, klutzy roles that were better suited for someone younger. However, her very brief turn in the racially charged, multi-plot drama &#8220;Crash&#8221; (2005) was a step in the right direction, with Bullock playing a middle-aged L.A. woman of privilege who, after a traumatic carjacking, angrily acts out on all of her worst prejudices and racial fears. The film went on to earn Best Picture of the Year at the Academy Awards.</p>
<p>In 2005, the sweetheart who had romanced some of her handsome co-stars &#8211; including McConaughey, one-time fiancé Tate Donovan whom she dated for four years, and the younger Ryan Gosling whom she met on the set of &#8220;Murder by Numbers&#8221; &#8211; finally found her soulmate in an unlikely, tattooed match. In July 2005, she married motorcycle icon Jesse James after dating for two years, surprising fans by becoming a stepmother to James&#8217; daughter from a previous marriage. While her personal life was better than ever, she revived one of her biggest comedy hits with the sequel &#8220;Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous&#8221; (2005), this time posing as a Las Vegas showgirl. While not as big a hit as its predecessor, it returned respectable box office. Taking a more serious turn, she portrayed author Harper Lee, friend of Truman Capote (Toby Jones), in the biopic &#8220;Infamous&#8221; (2006). Unfortunately, the film suffered from being released too close to a similar project on the infamous writer, &#8220;Capote&#8221; (2005). To the delight of filmgoing romantics everywhere, Bullock reunited with &#8220;Speed&#8221; co-star Reeves after 12 years in the romantic drama &#8220;The Lake House&#8221; (2006). Many thought the film about strangers who fall in love via letters they exchange through a mailbox that mysteriously bridges time an odd choice for their onscreen reunion, but the film was nevertheless a moderate success. In &#8220;Premonition&#8221; (2007), Bullock held up an otherwise mediocre thriller with her strong performance as a wife and mother living the perfect domestic life but nonetheless driven mad by foreknowledge of impending events, including the tragic death of her husband (Julian McMahon) in a car accident.</p>
<p>Showing no signs of leaving her comedy career behind, Bullock brought the appropriate befuddled exasperation to her starring role as a book editor who marries her Canadian assistant (Ryan Reynolds) to facilitate his legal status but has to then maintain the appearance of a real married couple in &#8220;The Proposal&#8221; (2009). She returned to the producer&#8217;s chair with another comedy, &#8220;All About Steve&#8221; (2009), in which she also portrayed an obnoxious romantic suitor whose wooing efforts border on stalking. Unfortunately, the film was a financial and critical bomb, leading many to question if Bullock&#8217;s career could survive a project that most deemed an utter embarrassment. To make things more difficult, she and James petitioned the court to gain permanent custody of James&#8217; daughter, Sunny, after the child&#8217;s mother, former porn star Janine Lindemulder, was arrested and jailed six months for tax evasion. At least on Lindemulder&#8217;s side, the battle played out in the press, as the adult movie actress accused &#8220;America&#8217;s sweetheart&#8221; of ulterior motives. For her part, Bullock and James let the lawyers do the talking. By the end of an eventful year, the critical reception for Bullock&#8217;s third release of 2009, &#8220;The Blind Side&#8221; was decidingly more positive than it had been for her previous two romantic comedies. With a southern accent and dyed blonde hair, Bullock sparkled in the feel-good biopic of a southern family who takes in a homeless African-American youngster and ultimately helps him fulfill his potential as an All-American football star.</p>
<p>Despite taking a critical beating for &#8220;All About Steve&#8221; earlier in the year, Bullock had the last laugh, earning two Golden Globe nominations in late 2009 for Best Actress &#8211; one for comedy (&#8220;The Proposal&#8221;) and one for drama (&#8220;The Blind Side&#8221;); she would win the latter. She also earned a Screen Actors Guild award for &#8220;The Blind Side,&#8221; a precursor to an inevitable Oscar nod. Ironically, the same day Bullock heard the news of an Oscar nomination for &#8220;The Blind Side,&#8221; she also received a Razzie nod for worst actress in &#8220;All About Steve.&#8221; In a an odd twist of fate, she would go on to win both awards. Unfortunately, Bullock&#8217;s post-Oscar glow was short-lived, when only a week and a half after tearfully thanking husband James from the podium for his love and support, In Touch Weekly broke the story that he had reportedly cheated on her with a tattoo model while she had been out of state filming &#8220;The Blind Side.&#8221; Bullock went into hiding, canceling her European appearances to promote the film, while James issued a public apology of sorts, saying &#8220;There is only one person to blame for this whole situation, and that is me.&#8221; The infidelity scandal mushroomed into a media firestorm, leading one outlet to declare James &#8220;the most hated man in America.&#8221; After over a month of lying low, Bullock filed for divorce in late April, as well as letting the world in on an extremely well kept secret: that she had adopted a 3 1/2-month old baby boy named Louis Bardo Bullock and would now be raising him alone as a single mom.</p>
<p>Watch Sandra Bullock movies on FMO:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://finemoviesonline.net/free-movies-online/tag/sandra-bullock/">Sandra Bullock</a></p>
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		<title>Rock Hudson</title>
		<link>http://finemoviesonline.net/mag/rock-hudson</link>
		<comments>http://finemoviesonline.net/mag/rock-hudson#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Nov 2010 14:52:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Moovy</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Actor Profile]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Rock Hudson, a product of Hollywood's star system.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img src="http://finemoviesonline.net/wp-content/images/rockhudson1.jpg" alt="Rock Hudson" width="150" style="float:left" /><br />
With his urbane charm, dashing good looks, and virile masculinity, Rock Hudson epitomized Hollywood&#8217;s classic matinee idol image &#8211; used to great effect in many a romantic comedy in which he was often paired with the equally magnetic Doris Day. One of the most popular movie stars of his time, Hudson&#8217;s screen career spanned five decades and was a shining example of Hollywood&#8217;s classical &#8220;star system&#8221;-style career promotion &#8211; his early success coming as the result of careful cultivation and nurturing by major movie studios. While generally underappreciated for his skills as an actor, Hudson nevertheless showed unexpected glimmers of brilliance, as he did in George Stevens&#8217; 1956 epic, &#8220;Giant&#8221; for which he received an Academy Award nomination. Known for his easy-going demeanor off-screen, Hudson was well-liked by colleagues and seemed to enjoy a rich and happy life in the public eye. In truth, however, Hudson endured a deeply troubled private life, living a lie for the sake of his career &#8211; including going along with a studio-arranged marriage. Manufactured to be Hollywood&#8217;s ultimate ladies man, Rock Hudson was, in reality, a lifelong homosexual. Tragically, he would become a cautionary tale as well. After contracting the HIV virus and dying of AIDS in 1985 &#8211; his private life now thrust public for the world to see &#8211; Hudson would become the first major Hollywood casualty of the misunderstood and widely feared disease. But he would not die in vain. His death not only opened people&#8217;s eyes to the disease itself, it inspired his good friend and onetime co-star Elizabeth Taylor to begin her decades-long role as a prominent AIDS activist, raising millions in the fight against the deadly disease that had robbed her friend of his golden years.</p>
<p>Born Leroy (Roy) Harold Scherer, Jr. on Nov. 17, 1925, in Winnetka, IL, the future movie idol was the son of a hard-drinking auto mechanic, Roy, Sr. and a telephone operator named Katherine Wood. In 1930, at the height of the Great Depression, like many distraught dads of that time, Hudson&#8217;s father abandoned the family. Fortunately, a year later, his mother remarried a man by the name of Wallace Fitzgerald, who adopted Roy, Jr. and gave him his last name. A poor student growing up, Hudson narrowly graduated from Winnetka&#8217;s New Trier High School &#8211; the same alma mater as Ann-Margret and Charlton Heston &#8211; in the early 1940&#8242;s. Far more enamored of movies than his school work, Hudson got a job as an usher at a local movie theater, where he developed a passion for acting. Eager to get started, Hudson tried out for roles in school plays but was rejected for never knowing his lines. </p>
<p><img src="http://finemoviesonline.net/wp-content/images/rockhudson2.jpg" width="580" alt="Rock Hudson" style="float:left" /></p>
<p>After a brief tour of duty in the U.S. Navy as an airplane mechanic during World War II, Hudson moved to Los Angeles. Determined as ever to make it in show business, Hudson applied to the University of Southern California&#8217;s drama program, but was disqualified due to poor grades. To make ends meet, Hudson found a job as a delivery truck driver, but spent most of his working hours idling outside of studio gates, passing out his headshots. Hardly the way to go about breaking into show biz, to be sure &#8211; but in this case, persistence paid off. In 1948, the handsome young Hudson caught the eye of powerful Hollywood talent scout, Henry Willson. The rest, as they say, was history. According to author Robert Barrios&#8217;s 2002 best-seller Screened Out: Playing Gay in Hollywood from Edison to Stonewall, the openly homosexual Willson almost single-handedly launched Hollywood&#8217;s highly profitable &#8220;beefcake craze&#8221; of the 1950&#8242;s, thanks to his knack for discovering and renaming young actors &#8220;whose visual appeal transcended any lack of ability.&#8221; Among Willson&#8217;s other discoveries were such nobodies-turned-Hollywood-golden-boys Arthur Gelien (a.k.a. Tab Hunter), Merle Johnson, Jr. (better known as Troy Donahue), and Bob Mosely (a.k.a. Guy Madison). According to Hollywood folklore, Willson changed Roy Fitzgerald&#8217;s name to the more masculine sounding &#8220;Rock Hudson&#8221; by combining the Rock of Gibraltar and the Hudson River.</p>
<p>In preparation for his first film role in Raoul Walsh&#8217;s &#8220;Fighter Squadron,&#8221; the newly re-christened Hudson got caps put on his teeth and received intensive coaching in acting, singing, dancing, fencing and horseback riding. Still, according to legend, it took no less than 38 takes for Hudson to successfully deliver his one line. Nonetheless, as a contract player for a major Hollywood studio, Hudson enjoyed a degree of job security that would disappear along with the studio system decades later. Cared for and jealously protected as a valuable studio asset, Hudson was literally groomed for leading man status. Studio P.R. flacks used their pull to push magazine publishers into plastering Hudson&#8217;s handsome mug across the covers of countless film magazines. At 29, Hudson earned his first professional recognition for his role as a bad boy redeemed in the mawkish romance &#8220;Magnificent Obsession&#8221; (1954) starring Jane Wyman. Hailed by Modern Screen Magazine as one of the best films of the year, the magazine also named Hudson the year&#8217;s &#8220;most popular actor.&#8221;</p>
<p>As Hudson&#8217;s marquee value increased, however, so too did the pressure to hide his homosexuality. In 1955, as a pre-emptive measure, Henry Willson arranged a marriage of convenience between Hudson and his (Willson&#8217;s) secretary, Phyllis Gates. Much to his credit, according to Hudson biographer, Sara Davidson, the actor made an earnest go at trying to make the sham marriage work. Unfortunately, the effort failed and the two subsequently divorced in 1958. In the meantime, however, with Hudson&#8217;s heterosexuality firmly established in the public eye, his acting career soared to new heights. A year after his highly publicized nuptials, Hudson landed his biggest payday to date &#8211; $100,000 to star in &#8220;Giant&#8221;(1956), director George Steven&#8217;s sprawling three and a half hour epic based on Edna Ferber&#8217;s novel. Cast opposite two of Hollywood&#8217;s other top rising young stars, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean, Hudson delivered a powerful performance as Texas rancher, Bick Benedict. As a result of their searing performances, both Hudson and Dean were nominated for Best Actor Oscars at the 1957 Academy Awards.</p>
<p>Hudson closed out the decade with strong performances in a string of merely adequate vehicles. Two notable exceptions were director Richard Brook&#8217;s sublime interracial drama, &#8220;Something of Value&#8221; (1957) and the overly long, but nevertheless effective adaptation of &#8220;A Farewell to Arms&#8221; (1957), based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway. In the late &#8217;50&#8242;s, Hudson&#8217;s career took another huge leap forward when he was cast opposite Doris Day in a string of light bedroom comedies &#8211; starting with 1958&#8242;s &#8220;Pillow Talk.&#8221; Audiences enjoyed the delightful chemistry between Hudson and Day so much that the pair reunited for two more outings, &#8220;Lover Come Back&#8221; (1961) and &#8220;Send Me No Flowers&#8221; (1964) &#8211; all big at the box office.</p>
<p>As he approached middle age, Hudson&#8217;s career began slowing down. Losing out on choice roles to younger men must have surely been a blow to his ego. Nevertheless, the actor continued churning films out at a steady pace. Perhaps not surprisingly, Hudson&#8217;s best work of the period came in a film where he played a character forcibly confronted with his own mortality and the grim realities of age in John Frankenheimer&#8217;s engrossing science-fiction/fantasy thriller, &#8220;Seconds&#8221; (1966). In it, Hudson gave a first-rate performance as a middle-aged man who is given a younger body, only to discover too late that he has made a Faustian bargain that has robbed him of both his sanity and his trust in humankind.</p>
<p>Still, roles like the one in &#8220;Seconds&#8221; were increasingly far and few between. Lured by the financial incentives and displeased with the feature scripts he was receiving, Hudson reluctantly agreed to do television. One of TV&#8217;s last major matinee holdouts, Hudson still commanded enough clout to at least get first choice of projects. In 1971, Hudson signed on to do a 90-minute made-for-TV movie of the week called &#8220;Once Upon a Dead Man&#8221; (NBC, 1971). A light mystery in the vein of 1934&#8242;s &#8220;The Thin Man,&#8221; &#8220;Once Upon a Dead Man&#8221; would eventually serve as a backdoor pilot for the highly successful series &#8220;McMillan and Wife&#8221; (NBC, 1971-77). Modeled after the comic adventures of husband-and-wife sleuthing team Nick and Nora Charles, &#8220;McMillan and Wife&#8221; starred Hudson as San Francisco Police Commissioner Stewart McMillan and pretty newcomer Susan Saint James as his flighty (but sporadically helpful) wife, Sally.</p>
<p>Hudson&#8217;s career hit a low in the early 1980&#8242;s. With his years of heavy smoking and drinking beginning to take its toll on his health, Hudson could no longer play leading man roles. His last high-profile gig was as the star of the short-lived series, &#8220;The Devlin Connection&#8221; (NBC, 1982), about a reluctant father-and-son detective team. Premiering as a mid-season replacement in the winter of 1982, &#8220;The Devlin Connection&#8221; started out strong in the ratings; only to have its momentum interrupted when Hudson suffered a massive heart attack during filming. As Hudson recovered from quintuple heart bypass surgery, production on &#8220;Devlin&#8221; shut down for nearly a year. While Hudson bounced back, the long delay proved fatal to the health of the show. By the time it returned to the airwaves, viewers had lost interest. The show&#8217;s final episode aired on Christmas Day, 1982.</p>
<p>Over the next two years, Hudson&#8217;s health continued to deteriorate. At first, this was attributed to the star&#8217;s lingering heart problems, but before long, other whispers and rumors began to spread. In 1985, Hudson signed on to play his last major role as Daniel Reece, the love interest of Linda Evans&#8217; character, Krystal Carrington, on the hit primetime drama, &#8220;Dynasty&#8221; (ABC, 1981-89). Although the role of Reece was originally conceived to become a major character, Hudson&#8217;s rapidly declining health dictated that the storyline be revised. When producers noticed Hudson looking increasingly frail and steadily losing weight over the course of the season, they began to worry and kept their fingers crossed. The final straw came, though, when Hudson&#8217;s speech started to become affected, preventing him from delivering his lines. Left with no other option, the Daniel Reece character was written out after 14 episodes. Though Hudson kept it a secret, in reality, the actor was aware of the severity of his condition, having been diagnosed with AIDS in June of 1984.</p>
<p>After months of seclusion, Hudson resurfaced in July of 1985 to join his old friend and co-star, Doris Day, for the launch of her new cable show, &#8220;Doris Day&#8217;s Best Friends&#8221; (CBN, 1985-86). In his final public appearance, a skeletally gaunt and incoherent Hudson confirmed the awful truth &#8211; he was knocking at death&#8217;s door. The shocking image of the once robust dreamboat withering away to nothingness was broadcast again all over the national news shows that night and for weeks to come. But at the end of the day, it was Doris Day&#8217;s devastated stunned silence that seemed to sum it up best.</p>
<p>No longer able to deny the obvious, Hudson and his doctors released a statement shortly after his appearance, stating that the actor had terminal liver cancer. A week later, however, Hudson came clean and publicly confirmed that he was dying of AIDS. How the actor contracted the deadly disease was unclear, but Hudson speculated that he may have contracted the HIV virus from infected blood he had received as part of his numerous heart bypass procedures (At the time of his operation, blood was not tested for the then-unknown HIV antibody). Hudson died on Oct. 2, 1985 of complications from AIDS. As per his instructions, he was cremated and his ashes buried at sea.</p>
<p>By this point, the question of whether or not Hudson was secretly gay seemed all but moot; most of his colleagues knew and it had long been an open secret in Hollywood&#8217;s gay underground. Nevertheless, the details of Hudson&#8217;s lifestyle became startlingly public following the funeral when Hudson&#8217;s longtime partner, Marc Christian, sued the actor&#8217;s estate on grounds of &#8220;intentional infliction of emotional distress.&#8221; Although he himself tested negative for the disease, according to Christian, Hudson continued having sex with him for a year after he had been diagnosed. In 1991, Christian reached a settlement with Hudson&#8217;s estate.</p>
<p>As the first high-profile Hollywood celebrity to die from AIDS, Hudson&#8217;s greatest legacy may have come in death. Casually dismissed for far too long as just a &#8220;gay disease&#8221; by the public, AIDS research had traditionally held a low priority among the medical establishment. After Hudson put a recognizable face on the disease, however, public awareness of AIDS increased dramatically. Hudson&#8217;s death also galvanized the Hollywood community for the first time to take a stance against the plight, helping to raise money and erase some of the stigma attached with the disease &#8211; typified best by his good friend Elizabeth Taylor&#8217;s activism, done in honor of her doomed friend. Had it not been for Hudson, it is unknown when, if ever, Hollywood would have come around to embrace this tradition of compassion and awareness regarding AIDS.</p>
<p>Watch Rock Hudson movies on FMO:</p>
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		<title>Clark Gable</title>
		<link>http://finemoviesonline.net/mag/clark-gable</link>
		<comments>http://finemoviesonline.net/mag/clark-gable#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Nov 2010 17:35:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Moovy</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Actor Profile]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Actor Lionel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bit Parts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blue Collar Worker]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Box Office Attraction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Butler In Gone With The Wind]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Clark Gable]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Frank Capra]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Greta Garbo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hollywood Features]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[King Of Hollywood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lionel Barrymore]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Merry Widow]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Movie Actors]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Natural Charm]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Norma Shearer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Painted Desert]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Romantic Comedy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Screen History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Screen Persona]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sound Films]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sporting Blood]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Image of Rhett Butler in "Gone with the Wind" remains indelibly associated with the name Clark Gable.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img src="http://finemoviesonline.net/wp-content/images/gable.jpg" alt="Clark Gable" width="150" style="float:left" /><br />
The former blue-collar worker from Ohio with the prominently jutting ears became the &#8216;King of Hollywood&#8217;, a title based on his being the leading male box office attraction throughout the 1930s. The dashing, mustachioed image of Rhett Butler in &#8220;Gone with the Wind&#8221; (1939) remains indelibly associated with the name Clark Gable, but before his &#8220;Frankly, my dear, I don&#8217;t give a damn&#8221; made screen history, Gable (with the aid of his MGM publicist Howard Strickland) had already established a distinctive screen persona as the virile, lovable rogue whose gruff facade only thinly masked a natural charm and goodness.</p>
<p>Following his marriage to actress Josephine Dillon, Gable played bit parts in several silent Hollywood features (e.g., &#8220;The Merry Widow&#8221;, 1925) but he first achieved fame as a leading man on Broadway in the late 20s. With the flourishing of sound films, Gable joined the new generation of movie actors who made the move from New York to Hollywood in the early 30s. On the advice of director/actor Lionel Barrymore MGM granted him a screen test and, after a talkie debut in a Pathe western (&#8220;The Painted Desert&#8221; 1931), Gable signed a contract with the prestigious Metro studio, where he remained until 1954. In his first year alone, Gable appeared in a dozen features, quickly rising from supporting player to romantic lead. He was teamed with all of MGM&#8217;s leading ladies, most notably opposite Norma Shearer in &#8220;A Free Soul&#8221; (1931), Greta Garbo in &#8220;Susan Lenox, Her Fall and Rise&#8221; (1931) and Joan Crawford in &#8220;The Possessed&#8221; (1931)&#8211;though he proved equally adept in male-oriented action sagas (&#8220;The Secret Six&#8221;, &#8220;Sporting Blood&#8221;, &#8220;Hell Divers&#8221;, all 1931).</p>
<p>Despite his rising popularity, Gable balked at having to play gangsters and overly callous characters. In a now legendary act of studio disciplining, Louis B. Mayer &#8220;punished&#8221; Gable by loaning him out to lowly Columbia for a role in a minor romantic comedy. The project, Frank Capra&#8217;s &#8220;It Happened One Night&#8221; (1934), unexpectedly became the first film to sweep the five major Oscars (for best actor, actress, director, writer, and picture) and vaulted Gable to new prominence in the industry. His sensational appearance &#8220;sans&#8221; undershirt in the film&#8217;s bedroom scene went down in Hollywood legend as the event that caused American males to make fewer trips to the haberdasher. While its effect on undershirt purchases may be purely apochryphal, the publicity from the event no doubt led to Gable&#8217;s next major role, that of the bare-chested Fletcher Christian in MGM&#8217;s &#8220;Mutiny on the Bounty&#8221; (1935), another Oscar-winner for Best Picture.</p>
<p><img src="http://finemoviesonline.net/wp-content/images/clarkgable2.jpg" alt="Clark Gable" style="float:left" /></p>
<p>With such success under his belt, Gable commanded even greater star treatment at Metro and began appearing in fewer films each year, although his range of genre vehicle expanded. He continued his string of romantic comedies with Jean Harlow (&#8220;Red Dust&#8221; 1932, &#8220;Hold Your Man&#8221; 1933, &#8220;China Seas&#8221; 1935, &#8220;Wife vs. Secretary&#8221; 1936, and &#8220;Saratoga&#8221; 1937), but also made off-beat musical appearances (&#8220;San Francisco&#8221;, &#8220;Cain and Mabel&#8221;, both 1936; the comedy-drama &#8220;Idiot&#8217;s Delight&#8221; 1939, in which he sang &#8220;Puttin&#8217; on the Ritz&#8221;), action dramas (&#8220;The Call of the Wild&#8221; 1935, &#8220;Test Pilot&#8221; 1938) and romances (&#8220;Love on the Run&#8221; 1936). With MGM even 0promoting his image in its other feature films (Judy Garland singing &#8220;Dear Mr. Gable&#8211;You Made Me Love You&#8221; in &#8220;Broadway Melody of 1938&#8243; and Mickey Rooney doing Gable impressions in &#8220;Babes in Arms&#8221; 1939) Clark Gable remained King of the Hollywood box office throughout the decade, culminating in his highly publicized and memorable performance in &#8220;Gone With the Wind.&#8221; Only his ill-conceived biopic &#8220;Parnell&#8221; (1937) interrupted a string of popular successes.</p>
<p>Gable&#8217;s reign at the top of Hollywood stardom in 1939 was enhanced by his storybook romance and marriage to actress Carole Lombard. Her untimely death in a plane crash in January 1942 marked a tragic downturn in Gable&#8217;s life. He turned his back on his film career and enlisted in the Army Air Corps. After two years of decorated combat service, Gable returned to the screen in 1945 with his macho hero&#8217;s image only further amplified. But despite much studio publicity for his return in &#8220;Adventure&#8221; (&#8220;Gable&#8217;s Back and Garson&#8217;s Got Him&#8221;) and some box office success, Gable&#8217;s post-war film career consisted mostly of routine, undistinguished vehicles. He consistently starred in one film a year, but never regained his status of 30s. Still, there were no pretenders to the throne. When MGM remade &#8220;Red Dust&#8221; in 1953 as &#8220;Mogambo&#8221;, Ava Gardner was in for Harlow, Grace Kelly played the Mary Astor role, and Gable&#8217;s part? Only Gable could fill Gable&#8217;s shoes, even twenty-one years later.</p>
<p>After a short-lived marriage (Lady Sylvia Ashley) and an unsuccessful attempt at independent production in the 1950s, Gable proved himself the King one last time, romancing the fragile Marilyn Monroe in John Huston&#8217;s &#8220;The Misfits&#8221; (1961). His performance was greatly praised, but Gable had insisted on performing his own stunts, including breaking a horse. Doctors had warned him about an already weakened heart and the exertion proved too much (this would be Monroe&#8217;s last completed film as well). He widowed his fifth wife, the former Kay Spreckles, in 1960, shortly before she gave birth to John Clark Gable, the son Gable had always longed for. As per his last wishes, Spreckles buried him alongside the great love of his life, Carole Lombard.</p>
<p>Watch Clark Gable movies on FMO:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://finemoviesonline.net/free-movies-online/tag/clark-gable/">Clark Gable</a></p>
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