RITA GAM

23 Mar

(2 April 1927 - 22 March 2016)

American actress and documentarian Rita Gam made her film debut in The Thief (1952) with Ray Milland, a film noted for its lack of dialogue. She began her career on Broadway and then played in several TV series before M-G-M came along with a film contract. Much of her career, however, was spent on television but she did appear in such cinematic exotica as Saadia (1953) with Cornel Wilde and Mel Ferrer, Night People (1954) with Gregory Peck and Broderick Crawford, Douglas Sirk’s Sign of the Pagan (1954) with Jeff Chandler and Jack Palance (the latter as Attila the Hun), Magic Fire (1955) as Cosima, second wife of Franz Liszt, and Hannibal (1959) with Victor Mature, and she was Herodias in Nicholas Ray’s King of Kings (1961). In 1971 she was in Alan J. Pakula’s Klute with Jane Fonda, was Doria in Otto Preminger’s Such Good Friends with Ken Howard (q.v.) and won a Silver Bear in Berlin for No Exit. The rest of Gam’s career was mainly in TV. Her last film was Rowing Through (1996), about champion sculler Tiff Wood. She made two series of TV documentaries on the World of Film and the World of Beauty. Gam’s first husband was film director Sidney Lumet and she was a bridesmaid at Grace Kelly’s wedding.

MICHAEL DARVELL

Michael Darvell

Michael Darvell trained as a librarian at Watford and in Surrey before joining Ealing Libraries where he became Music Librarian for the borough. He edited Masthead, the magazine of the University of North London School of Librarianship, The Surrealist, the staff magazine of Surrey County Library, and contributed to the Assistant Librarian and London Librarian professional journals. A freelance film reviewer since 1970, he has written for Film, Films Illustrated, Film Review, Movie Maker and Radio Times, as well as editing Montage, the London film societies magazine, for ten years. A change of career saw him joining What’s On in London as Features Editor and he eventually stepped into the shoes of the late F. Maurice Speed (founding father of Film Review annual) as the magazine’s Editor. From 2007 to 2015, he was co-editor of the Film Review annual with Mansel Stimpson. As well as writing about films, Michael has reviewed theatre for The Stage newspaper, and has written about music theatre and cabaret for the Classical Source and Musical Theatre Review websites. He is also a former restaurant critic for the ViewLondon website. Michael has been a member of the London Film Critics’ Circle since 2005.

RITA GAM

KEN HOWARD

RICHARD BRADFORD