Simone Signoret

A Marx brothers retrospective, a Marilyn Monroe double bill and a screening of "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" featuring the work of the late composer Robert Sherman and his brother Richard are among this week's highlights....

Nov. 14, 1960: The Mirror begins publishing Maurice Zolotow’s biography of Marilyn Monroe (and yes, Clark Gable, her co-star in “The Misfits” dies in a few days). On the jump, Simone Signoret says that if Monroe is in love with......

Nov. 10, 1959: June Crosby stabs her husband, Bob, with a 10-inch letter opener during a fight. She tells Beverly Hills police that she grabbed the letter opener to fight him off after he pushed her down during a violent argument. Her husband says she...

Wow! Now there’s an ugly layout, even for 1960. Mash Notes and Comment (Press Release) "An actor, by name TV star Don Porter, decided he needed a publicist and dropped in to see me regarding same. " 'I need publicity,' said Don. 'What kind can you...

• Katy Perry has been tapped to host the 12th edition of the Teen Choice Awards airing on Fox on Aug. 9. Perry is a four-time also-ran with these kudos, which determine winners via an online vote. She lost the Myspacer race in 2008 and her three music...

Dick Berg, a longtime television and motion picture writer and producer, died Tuesday from a fall at his home in Los Angeles. He was 87. A pioneer of the made-for-television movie format that revolutionized network programming in the 1970s, Berg helped...

If Gabourey Sidibe ("Precious") wins the Oscar on March 7, she'll become the fifth performer to prevail as best actress for her film debut. Of the previous four, one was Shirley Booth ("Come Back, Little Sheba"). The three others are pictured below. Who...

This year's Oscars numbered only one foreign-born winner -- Austria's Christoph Waltz ("Inglorious Basterds") -- among the four acting champs. However, that does not mean the Oscars are guilty of any homegrown bias. After all, six of the 20 acting...

If springtime in Paris isn't going to work for you this year, rent a movie and pretend -- until you can book a flight and go. Here are my Top 10 picks for films that best show off the French capital. For scenes from these memorable films, go to latimes....

French director Jean-Pierre Melville is the great poet of crime cinema, and 1963's "Le Doulos" -- starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and set in Paris, the most criminally romantic city in the world -- is a tour de force. Playing for a week at the Nuart in...

Indifferently received when it debuted in France, never before theatrically released in the United States, Jean-Pierre Melville's 1969 "Army of Shadows" stands revealed as a classic film that a trick of fate has made as relevant now as when it was made....