Sad news. One of the amazing actresses of the Fifties, Anne Francis, has died. Her key films include Bad Day At Black Rock and Blackboard Jungle (both 1955), and of course Forbidden Planet, one of the greatest sci-fi films of all time, and still the most canonical, with its marriage of Freud and Prospero. In the Sixties she entered a whirlwind of TV guest appearances in all the great shows, Dr. Kildare, Mission:Impossible, The Invaders, Columbo, Cannon, Banacek, - but no Star Trek, sadly.
THAT HANDSOME MAN A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought. Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that
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