Charles Champlin

Nearly 10 years ago, the Motor Press Guild held a dinner at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. There, masters of movie chase scenes and stunt drivers Hal Needham, Jack Gill and Corey Eubanks held a panel discussion on their craft. Film...

Apr 10, 1968: Arrivals at the Academy Awards outside the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium....

Joan Didion is an acknowledged master of nonfiction, from her breakthrough 1968 essay collection "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" to "The Year of Magical Thinking," which won the 2005 National Book Award. Her fiction, however, has always been more...

Feb. 6, 1945: “National Velvet” opens in Los Angeles. Photograph by John Malmin/Los Angeles Times March 27, 1957: Michael Todd poses with Elizabeth Taylor after “Around the World in 80 Days” won the Academy Award for best picture....

16 books about Elizabeth Taylor, scandals included...

Los Angeles Times file photo [Update: This photo stumped the brain trust! And perhaps with good reason. It was apparently never published in The Times and is from a somewhat obscure movie called “The Fixer,” which is not on Netflix......

After surviving a disfiguring bout of cancer, Roger Ebert was felled by the disease Wednesday at age 70. He had announced just days before that a new cancer had been found and that he was going to write, and tweet, a little less. The Pulitzer Prize-...

On Feb. 24, the 85th Academy Awards ceremony will take place at the Dolby (formerly Kodak) Theatre in Hollywood. The show has grown considerably from its humble origins in 1929 as a private banquet for 270 guests at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. This...

Charles Higham, a poet, critic and prolific celebrity biographer who found political and sexual intrigue in the lives of Hollywood icons such as Cary Grant, Marlene Dietrich and, most controversially, Errol Flynn, died April 21 at his Los Angeles home. He...

Susan Tyrrell, an eccentric, husky-voiced character actress best known for her Oscar-nominated supporting role as a blowsy barfly in director John Huston's 1972 movie "Fat City," has died. She was 67. Tyrrell died Saturday at her home in Austin, Texas,...

Early in his career as one of Hollywood's top cinematographers, Bruce Surtees became known for his artful use of low-level, moody lighting in films such as Don Siegel's "The Beguiled" and "Dirty Harry" and Bob Fosse's "Lenny." Surtees, 74, who received...

Swedish actor Erland Josephson, one of fabled director Ingmar Bergman's closest friends and collaborators, known for his portrayals of aloof intellectuals and often Bergman's alter ego in such celebrated films as "Scenes From a Marriage" and "Cries and...