A Perpetual State of Wonder

life:

The figure on the austere marble stairs of the Paris Opera [see first image in this gallery], looking like a sporting type who got in by mistake, is the newest addition to its ballet roster: Gene Kelly. Normally the staircase swarms with France’s most resplendent music-goers, and on gala openings it is lined with red-coated guardsmen.

But at times this summer the scene looked right out of his American in Paris as Kelly rushed to and from the stage at rehearsals of his 45-minute jazz ballet, Pas de Dieux (Dance of the Gods). Idolized in France for his movie dancing, Kelly was signed by the Opera’s own ballet company to enliven its shopworn repertoire with this work set to Gershwin music. He does not perform himself, but his radical dance ideas drew 23 curtain calls from a fancy premiere audience of ballet regulars. Cheered one of France’s top critics: “Kelly succeeded in blowing away a half century of dust from the Paris Opera.”

— LIFE magazine, August 1960

Here, rare photographs of Gene Kelly, the protean dancer, singer, actor, producer, director and choreographer in France in 1960, as he enjoys a prestigious off-screen career highlight: creating a ballet for the storied Paris Opera.

Read more: http://life.time.com/culture/gene-kelly-rare-photos-of-a-song-and-dance-legend/#ixzz20EhypTf7

bookspaperscissors:

Portraits by Howard Schatz

GEOFFREY RUSH

Left: You’re the cornerman for a winded female boxer, desperately exhorting her: “She’s run away with your boyfriend! She’s kidnapped your kid! Get out there and kill that heifer!”
Center: You’re five years into a contented but sedentary married life, protesting to your wife, “I said you’re ‘Rubenesque.’ It doesn’t mean fat. It means … Rubenesque!”
Right: You’re a 10-year-old in a high-rise apartment, playing fetch with your fox terrier and a tennis ball—which has just bounced out the window, with your dog in full pursuit.

bookspaperscissors:

Portraits by Howard Schatz

JOHN MALKOVICH

Left: You’re an ingénue actress, new to Hollywood. Your agent has just called to say you’ve been chosen for a role in a big movie … as George Clooney’s love interest.
Center: You’re a construction worker having lunch with your buddies on the street in front of the job, calling out to a sexy woman passing by, “Hey, hon, wanna see what’s in my lunchbox?”
Right: You’re a mid-level drug dealer with a big payment due to a Mob boss, getting the news from one of your street runners that he lost the big coke stash in, “like, a weird gust of wind.”

awesomepeoplereading:

Hepburn, Grant, and Stewart read.

Too much awesomeness in one photograph.  I can’t even….

awesomepeoplereading:

Alfred Hitchcock reads.

theconstantbuzz:

Alfred Hitchcock

booklover:

(via Stanley Kubrick: kub 9 | VandM.com)

Stanley Kubrick’s photos taken by himself in 1960s in New York.