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9 articles from 2009
Actor Richard Todd Dead At Age 90; Recreated His WWII Heroics On Film
5 December 2009 4:25 AM, PST
| Cinemaretro.com
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Todd in his most acclaimed role, as star of The Dam Busters.
The distinguished British actor Richard Todd has passed away at age 90. Todd was a real-life war hero, being among the first paratroopers to enter France on the eve of the Normandy invasion. Todd later starred in two major films recreating the historic event: D-Day, The Sixth of June and The Longest Day. He also starred in the acclaimed WWII adventure The Dam Busters. His eclectic post war career included an eight year stint performing on Britain's West End in the play The Business of Murder and launching a successful dairy business. Among his other films were starring opposite Ronald Reagan in The Hasty Heart (for which he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar), The Long and the Short and the Tall (aka Jungle Fighters), Never Let Go in which he starred opposite Peter Sellers, The Hellions, Operation Crossbow
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- nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
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'Dam Busters' star Todd dies, aged 90
4 December 2009 8:24 AM, PST
| digitalspy
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The Dam Busters star Richard Todd has died at the age of 90, reports BBC News. A spokesperson for his family confirmed that he passed away in his sleep at his home in Grantham, near Lincolnshire on Thursday morning. "[He] had been suffering from cancer, an illness that he bore with his habitual courage and dignity. His family were with him throughout," he said. Todd is best known for his role in war movie The Dam Busters. His other film (more)
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- By Lara Martin
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Richard Todd obituary
4 December 2009 8:10 AM, PST
| The Guardian - Film News
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Actor best known for his role in the classic second world war film The Dam Busters
Richard Todd, who has died of cancer aged 90, will be best remembered for the films in which he played a wide assortment of clean-cut British heroes. His most famous performance was as Wing Commander Guy Gibson in The Dam Busters (1955), although he also played Robin Hood and Sir Walter Raleigh.
As dour and stiff upper-lipped as any of the characters he portrayed in his highly successful film career in the 1940s and 1950s, he was one of the first members of the Parachute Regiment to jump on D-day – a real-life role he later echoed, albeit at a higher rank, in The Longest Day (1962), the reconstruction of the invasion of Normandy 17 years after the event (another actor posed as Todd himself).
As Gibson, Todd starred as the leader of the daring airborne mission in May
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- Dennis Barker
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Actor Todd Dies At 90
4 December 2009 4:16 AM, PST
| WENN
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The Dam Busters star and real life war hero Richard Todd has died at the age of 90.
Todd, best known for his role in the 1955 World War II epic, passed away peacefully in his sleep at his home in Grantham, England on Thursday.
The Irish-born star began as a stage actor in the 1930s, but his promising career was cut short by war and he joined the British Army. He graduated to the position of captain in the British 6th Airborne Division and took part in the famous D-Day landings of 1944.
After the war, Todd returned to the stage for a production of The Hasty Heart and was chosen to star in a Hollywood adaptation which won him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in 1949. For his second role he teamed up with legendary director Alfred Hitchcock to star in 1950 thriller Stage Fright.
He went on to play heroes including folk legends Robin Hood and Rob Roy, before landing a role in The Dam Busters. He also starred in another well-known World War II epic The Longest Day in 1962, in which he relived the D-Day landings.
Todd came close to landing the iconic role of James Bond in the super-spy's movie debut Dr. No. The actor was 007 author Ian Fleming's first choice to play the suave secret agent, but a scheduling conflict ruled him out of the movie and handed the part to Sean Connery.
The veteran star continued to act in the 1980s with roles in British TV shows including crime series Silent Witness and sci-fi classic Doctor Who and was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1993.
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Dam Busters actor Richard Todd dies
4 December 2009 3:51 AM, PST
| The Guardian - Film News
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The actor who played wing commander Guy Gibson in The Dam Busters, and was first choice to play James Bond, has died
The actor Richard Todd, best known for his role in the classic war film The Dam Busters, has died at the age of 90.
His spokeswoman said Todd, who had been suffering from cancer, died last night.
She said in a statement: "He had been suffering from cancer, an illness that he bore with his habitual courage and dignity. His family were with him throughout."
Richard Andrew Palethorpe Todd was born in Dublin on 11 June 1919, the son of a British officer. He grew up in Devon and attended Shrewsbury public school.
His interest in the theatre led him to small roles in stage productions in England and Scotland. In 1939 he was a co-founder of the Dundee Repertory Theatre.
After the war he gained fame in the London stage version of The Hasty Heart,
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Review: 'Logan's Run' on Blu-ray
18 November 2009 2:34 PM, PST
| Comicmix.com
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What a difference a year makes. In 1976, MGM released a film based on William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson’s 1967 novel Logan’s Run. Generally lambasted by the press, it may have been a nadir in science fiction films putting studios off the genre until the following May, when 20th Century Fox looked forward with Star Wars.
Warner Home Video has just released Logan’s Run
on Blu-ray and it finally gave me a chance to see the movie, something that somehow eluded me back in High School. It has most certainly not aged well and I can see why Roger Ebert called it a "vast, silly extravaganza", which changed the novel in some ways for the better but failed to visually interest us in the society.
In the film, directed by Michael Anderson, the biggest change was in the location of society: domed and hermetically sealed as compared
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- Robert Greenberger
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Stephen Fry Says He's Writing Jackson's 'Dambusters'
20 October 2009 11:37 PM, PDT
| GetTheBigPicture.net
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Peter Jackson can still do anything he wants. He's loaded, his movies have earned everyone involved a ton of
money, and if The Lovely Bones excels, he'll have even blancher carte or something. With Tintin and The Hobbit
expecting big things, too, well...you can do the math.
But Jackson has his eye on another project, one that's been mentioned for some time, and it appears that it might have his full
attention after he makes it through the next couple of years. Ain't It Cool News heard that Stephen Fry (V for Vendetta) has
confirmed he's begun work on the script for the remake of The Dam Busters, saying that Jackson is so involved already that he has commissioned the construction of
Lancaster bomber airplanes in his native New Zealand so filming can begin whenever Jackson's ready.
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- Colin Boyd
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Peter Jackson is Moving Like 'Dam Busters'
19 October 2009 9:15 PM, PDT
| CinemaSpy
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Peter Jackson, like Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott, has a full roster of film projects on his plate. But that's not stopping him from lining up his next project, according to a scooper over at AICN.
After wrapping post on The Lovely Bones, working on Tintin with Spielberg, and moving into pre-production on The Hobbit prequels, Jackson will next tackle the long rumored remake of the WWII thriller, The Dam Busters.
The scooper tells AICN that while attending a charity event, writer/actor Stephen Fry (V for Vendetta) confirmed that Dam Busters is in pre-production and that he is currently writing the script for it. He also mentioned that Peter Jackson is heavily involved and has even built the Lancaster Bomber aircraft in New Zealand so that filming can get underway.
No production dates have yet been announced, however.
The original 1955 film told the true story of how the British
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Peter Jackson's 'Dambusters' to March Onscreen in 3-D?
3 August 2009 8:00 AM, PDT
| Fast Company
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Peter Jackson's currently trialing some hot-topic tech that may bring a whole new dimension to his remake of the historic Dambusters movie: 3-D filming. He's shooting test footage in New Zealand to see how feasible it is right now.
There is something of a 3-D renaissance happening in the entertainment industry right now. We've heard it's coming soon to our TVs and PC monitors, it's had an outing in a number of CGI films like Pixar's Up, the ever tech-savvy U2 even released a whole movie/show performance piece in 3-D last year, and James Cameron spent 14 years perfecting the 3-D technology for his new movie Avatar. Jackson's reported to be interested because 3-D could enable the audience to experience the history of the Dambusters in a much more physical way--because, let's face it, the idea of low-flying bombers launching water-skipping bombs at a wartime dam target is pretty damn physical.
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- Kit Eaton
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2009 |
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9 articles from 2009
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