Judith Anderson

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Born in Australia in 1897, Judith Anderson -- later "Dame'd" -- was an acclaimed stage actress, perfecting MACBETH and MADEA with her signature imperious grandeur, who eventually found her way into movies, Hitchcock and David Selznick placing her into her career defining role as the nefariously-loyal housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, the woman who rightly tormented Olivia de Havilland's trashy sister (who didn't even have a name!) in REBECCA (1940).

She continued on in films like LAURA (1944), CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF (1958) and even STAR TREK: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK in the '80s.

My grandmother loved her (and as they were both Sun in Aquarius/Scorpio Rising, that made some sense, as we tend to like people who remind us of ourselves) such that my gramma, she and her sister had the same name and even named her children after the actress's stage name.... So it gets weird.

Just the other day, I realized I have eight movies on DVD with Dame Judith (and zero with Streep whom I like a lot -- but SOPHIE'S CHOICE is so depressing, and all those hour-long close-ups make me think that Meryl's in my house and watching me unflinchingly).

Long relocated to Santa Barbara on the California coast, Dame Judith Anderson did a stint on the daytime soap named for the hamlet in which she resided, in the mid-'80s. But she was predictably under-used and publicly complained about it... I always want her on DYNASTY/THE COLBYS as Moldavia's queen mother and also Jason's aunt whom, not surprisingly, detests Alexis as well as her niece, Barbara Stanwyck. who'd already eye-gouged or killed her in two earlier movies. (A site member named her "Ursula," which I'm stealing and will refuse him screen credit and any residual renumeration it produces).

At any rate, she died in 1992 at the age of 94.


I always want to see her in a movie (smells like 1964) with Gloria Swanson, Miriam Hopkins and Mary Astor, aging sisters in a big, dark house. I'd call it "Scorpio Rising" except that Kenneth Anger stole that title the same year -- and he's not even a Scorpio Rising, the little down-market carpetbagger grifter...!

 
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Crimson

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Judith Anderson was a curious performer. To my eye, her classical acting is atrociously dated: lots of melodramatic overenunciating and grandly florid mannerisms. (Ditto for her MACBETH co-star, Maurice Evans.) Yet she was a canny cinematic performer who frequently shrewdly underplayed.

I'd still swap her out of CAT for Bankhead though, despite thinking she's the best of the four principals.
 
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Snarky Oracle!

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Judith Anderson was a curious performer. To my eye, her classical acting is atrociously dated: lots of melodramatic overenunciating and grandly florid mannerisms. (Ditto for her MACBETH co-star, Maurice Evans.) Yet she was a canny cinematic performer who frequently shrewdly underplayed.

I'd still swap her out of CAT for Bankhead though, despite thinking she's the best of the four principals.

She admits to having to rein it in on film...

I always want to see her in a movie (smells like 1964) with Gloria Swanson, Miriam Hopkins and Mary Astor, aging sisters in a big, dark house

Oh, and maybe Maria Callas -- did she ever make any movies? And perhaps Susan Hayward. A house full of Scorpio Rising divas where they could scheme and play head-games and manipulate endlessly (like they do) until something horrific happens and the survivors can all regally accuse each other of being responsible.

Then again, I could always call it:



Before long, we can probably make our own movies with our own preferred, long-deceased casts... But I'd probably have a Scorpio Rising write it, as they'd do the best job of it. Scorpio Risings make the best writers, the best directors, the best stars, the best cooks, the best divas -- and the best killers and the best dictators.

What's not 2 love? And why wouldn't you place as many as possible into a film together?? Aside from the competitiveness and who demands the top billing, you just couldn't lose!

 
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Luke_Krebbs_Ewing

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Wasn't she also in Star Trek III The Search for Spock as a Vulcan High Priest who restores Spock's katra to his body? :)
 

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Wasn't she also in Star Trek III The Search for Spock as a Vulcan High Priest who restores Spock's katra to his body? :)


That's mentioned in the very first post of this thread. If you were actually reading and not just posting to post.

And I say that as someone who sometimes makes 500 posts a day.
 

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Is it true she was in a STAR TREK movie? :innocent:

The late 70s/early 80s was an interesting time with all of those older, prestigious actors slumming for paychecks in genre films.

And there should have been more of them doing it on the nighttime soaps... The image people have of DYNASTY was that they did this all the time -- and they should've but they really didn't. FC did it a lot more.
 
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Luke_Krebbs_Ewing

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That's mentioned in the very first post of this thread. If you were actually reading and not just posting to post.

And I say that as someone who sometimes makes 500 posts a day.

I did read it. I must've just missed that bit.

Mind you I'd probably had a few. :)
 

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Is it true she was in a STAR TREK movie? :innocent:

The late 70s/early 80s was an interesting time with all of those older, prestigious actors slumming for paychecks in genre films.

And not just genre films, you'd be surprised how many of them guest starred on Angela Lansbury's Murder She Wrote. :)
 

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I wasn't really talking about Old Hollywood movie stars -- most of whom naturally gravitated towards TV late in their careers -- but the really esteemed British stage actors who jumped into Sci Fi / fantasy / horror films after Guiness' success in STAR WARS -- Olivier, Richardson, Robson, Anderson, etc.
 
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