Shirley MacLaine to receive the AFI Life Achievement Award

[Big Magilla]

Ah, yes, How the West Was Won, If they honor Debbie next year, it will have five!.

[Mike Kelly]

Well done. I didn't realize Jezebel had four. I had Mr. Roberts and How the West was Won (Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck, James Stewart and John Ford, who was once again a co-director)

[Big Magilla]

Lots of 2 and 3 combinations, but the only 4 I can find are:

Mister Roberts - Henry Fonda, James Cagney, Jack Lemmon, John Ford (co-director).

Jezebel - Bette Davis, Henry Fonda, William Wyler (direction), John Huston (screenplay).

[Mike Kelly]

Here's a list of all the AFI recipients.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFI_Life_Achievement_Award

Can anyone name at least two movies where four recipients are in the credits?

[Mike Kelly]

I also think that some may have been offered the honor, but declined. Katharine Hepburn for sure, and perhaps Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, Woody Allen and Doris Day.

[Big Magilla]

I used to think it was ratings. Maybe it still is. TV Land, which is owned by MTV, is a cable TV station that shows vintage TV series from the 1950s and 60s. MacLaine is of that era, so is Debbie Reynolds. The problem with de Havilland is that there aren't very many co-stars left from her films who they could get to pay tribute. There's George Hamilton from The Light in the Piazza and from TV, Jane Seymur from The Woman He Loved and Amy Irving from Anastasia: The Story of Anna. Maybe they could get Ann Rutherford from Gone With the Wind and Mary Anderson from To Each His Own if they hurry, but that's about it.

[Reza]

How does the AFI choose the recipient each year? How come Streisand and Streep have already won and MacLaine gets hers after them? And then there's Olivia de Havilland......shouldn't she have received this award by now?

[Big Magilla]

Does anyone watch TV Land? Granted the AFI hasn't deserved any better in recent years, but Shirley MacLaine should be feted on CBS or one of the networks that people actually watch like John Frod, James Cagney, Alfred Hitchcock and the other early recipients of this award.

[Reza]

Finally a female...................and well deserved !!


latimes.com

The stars align for Shirley MacLaine

After nearly 60 years in show business, Shirley
MacLaine will receive the American Film
Institute's Life Achievement Award on Thursday.

By Susan King, Los Angeles Times

June 6, 2012

In her nearly 60 years in show business, Shirley
MacLaine has played some unforgettable roles, met
some legendary characters and had some memorable
meals. And sometimes all three happened at once.

Take, for example, her story about her film debut
in Alfred Hitchcock's 1955 dark comedy, "The
Trouble With Harry," in which she brought her
quirky charm to the role of the feisty young wife
of the very dead Harry. Hitchcock made her eat every meal with him.

"He knew I was just out of the chorus, so I
hadn't eaten for years. He said, 'You have got to
eat with me.' We ate at the Stowe, Vt., hotel
dining room. He chose and always chose where
to shoot according to the food."

Life has always been a banquet for MacLaine,
who's relished her multiple identities as
actress, singer, dancer, writer, director,
political and environmental activist, bestselling
author and ardent believer in reincarnation. On
Thursday, the Oscar winner adds another honor to
her plate: She's receiving the American Film
Institute's Life Achievement Award at Sony Pictures.

The gala, which will feature such guests as her
baby brother, Warren Beatty, who received the
award four years ago, and two other previous
recipients, Barbra Streisand and Meryl Streep,
will be shown on TV Land on June 24.

"I only worked with her once and we were playing,
if not adversarial characters, characters who
chafed against each other," said Streep who
played MacLaine's daughter in 1990's "Postcards
From the Edge." "That's hard with her because
she's so ingratiating, so much fun and so interesting on every subject."

AFI chief Bob Gazzale said MacLaine's talent
"runs so deep it's almost indescribable. Nobody
on-screen can smile through the tears like Shirley MacLaine."

Asked why it had taken so long for the
organization to honor her, Gazzale said, "Shirley
likes to joke that we waited until 2012 because
2012 is the year of alignment and this is a sign.
The American Film Institute waited until the
stars aligned in 2012 to shine a proper light."

MacLaine, a vivacious 78, earned four lead
actress Oscar nominations for 1958's "Some Came
Running," 1960's"The Apartment,"1963's "Irma la
Douce" and 1977's "The Turning Point" before
finally winning on her fifth try for 1983's
"Terms of Endearment," playing one of the
screen's great mothers, Aurora Greenway.

She's as busy as ever now, with a new film
Richard Linklater's "Bernie," costarring Jack
Black in theaters as she starts filming a
remake of James Thurber's "The Secret Life of
Walter Mitty," playing Ben Stiller's mother.
MacLaine recently returned from England, where
she did two episodes for the third season of the
wildly popular PBS "Masterpiece" series "Downton
Abbey," playing Elizabeth McGovern's American mother.

"I love [series regular] Maggie Smith. I have
known her for 40 years," MacLaine said. "She told
me that we met at an Oscar backstage thing. I was
either presenting or I was up for something and I
lost. We were standing next to the catering table
and there was this huge chocolate cake." MacLaine
said that after she lost, she ate half the cake,
telling Smith, "I don't need to be thin anymore."

Over a hearty lunch of Chinese chicken salad and
quesadillas she also asks for extra nuts to
munch on MacLaine is funny and frank and very
chatty. "I haven't changed much with food, by the way," she admits, smiling.

She recalled her breakfasts with Hitchcock
"eggs, bacon, French toast, waffles and fruit
every morning and then a lunch like that because
lunch was catered. I remember Don Hartman, the
president of Paramount, called me and said, 'You
are gaining weight. We can't match you from one
scene to another. Why are you sabotaging yourself?'"

That same year, she also worked with Dean Martin
she later became sort of a mascot of the Rat
Pack led by Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis in the comedy "Artists and Models."

"It was their second to last picture and I
watched the disintegration [between the two],"
she said. "Dean didn't want to take orders from
Jerry. Dean was the funny one, in my opinion.
Jerry was scientifically very funny. But Dean was spontaneously funny."

MacLaine was 20 in when she was discovered by
producer Hal Wallis in 1954. She was the
understudy for star Carol Haney in the Broadway musical "The Pajama Game."

"That night I got to the theater. Bob Fosse, Hal
Prince, Jerry Robbins and George Abbott were
lined up at the stage door saying, 'Haney is out.
You're on,'" she said. "I had never had a
rehearsal. I watched her in the wings. [Star]
Johnny Raitt sang one of my songs because I
didn't know my key. I had just watched her and
the lines made their way into my brainstem enough for me to get by."

When she arrived in Hollywood, she worked at
Paramount. She couldn't get over "the line of
dressing rooms. Next to me was Anna Magnani,
who'd just won the Oscar for 'The Rose Tattoo.'
Lizabeth Scott, she was having a thing with Hal
Wallis, Dean, Jerry, Danny Kaye and I think at
the top was Elvis. We would all gather around the
fish pond [on the lot] and talk about our lives.
Zsa Zsa would come sashaying in every now and
then. I remember she told me how I should put my
real jewelry like I had any in the bank. And
if I was going to get mugged, I would be mugged
for the paste. She would say, 'It's worth it, daahling."'

MacLaine is only the seventh female recipient of
the AFI life Achievement Award since the first
honor was given to John Ford in 1973. Streep was
the last woman honored she received her award
in 2004. She'll be presenting the honor to MacLaine on Thursday evening.

Streep recalled that in her acceptance speech she
looked out at the actresses in the audience and
said it was "appalling that I got it and people
like Shirley MacLaine and Debbie Reynolds and the
[female] giants of our industry have not."

Among MacLaine's favorite roles is that of Fran,
the elevator operator Jack Lemmon's character
loves in the 1961 best picture winner "The
Apartment." And, of course, she has a story about it.

"We started with 29 pages. That is all there
was.Billy [Wilder, the film's director] and Izzy
[I.A.L. Diamond] wrote it according to our
chemistry on-screen and in real life," she
recalled. "Billy knew I was playing cards with
Dean and Frank on the weekends. That's why he put
in the gin game. We got new pages every day. I
remember one day we went to lunch Jack and me
and Billy. I was in the middle of some love
affair thing and I stopped and sighed I
remember it very well. I said, 'Why do people
have to be in love with people, anyway?' He liked
that line. It's in the gin game scene."