Showing results by author "Michael B. Druxman" in All Categories

On the evening of February 1, 1922, silent film director William Desmond Taylor was shot to death in his Los Angeles home. The murder, coming on the heels of the Fatty Arbuckle scandal, shocked the Hollywood community and the country, resulting in reform groups labeling the film capital a "modern day Babylon," and demanding that movies be censored or, in some communities, even banned.

Christopher Lee: A One-Person Play by Michael B. Druxman (Lee’s one-time publicist), joins the actor in 1976, as he is about to depart his home in England for the United States. It is his hope that, in America, he will be able to abandon the horror genre, and find a greater variety of roles.

During their prime in the 1940s and early 1950s, Abbott and Costello were the most popular comedy duo in show business. They first became a team in burlesque, graduated to radio with Kate Smith, then Broadway with comedian Bobby Clark and Carmen Miranda; and, ultimately, to the movies, making their debut supporting Allan Jones and Nancy Kelly in One Night in the Tropics (1940).

Maureen O’Hara was “the queen of technicolor”. With her bright red hair and piercing green eyes, this Irish colleen’s career spanned over 70 years, as she held her own against such leading men as Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn, James Stewart, Charles Laughton, Henry Fonda, and, of course, John Wayne. Her films include such classics as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, How Green Was My Valley, Rio Grande, The Quiet Man, Miracle on 34th Street, and The Parent Trap.

Before Oprah, before Ellen, there was Dinah Shore. She was the queen of the afternoon talk show. For over five decades, Dinah induced a state of joy into people wherever she appeared, a love affair between her and her audience. In the fickle world of popular music, Dinah had a longer run at the top than any other girl singer, and on television, she had no equal in the musical field. Arguably, she was "the first lady of television". Dinah's life, however, was not always easy.

Michael B. Druxman’s one-person play, Ronald Reagan: Movie Star, joins the actor in 1949, when he has just lost a major film role to Errol Flynn. Indeed, not much in his life seems to be going well at this time. Divorced from actress Jane Wyman, his recent romance with Patricia Neal has also taken a wrong turn after she discovered Gary Cooper.

Yvonne De Carlo, Michael B. Druxman’s one-woman play, is set in 1974 when the actress is at an emotional crossroads. As she contemplates divorcing her husband of 18 years, she remembers the events that have brought her to this point in her life, beginning with a fatherless childhood in Vancouver, BC, and a destitute mother intent on making her daughter a ballet star. She further reminisces about the many men who have passed through her life, including romances with the likes of Howard Hughes and Aly Khan.

Clara Blow is a one-woman play in two acts about the life and times of Clara Bow. The "It" Girl was the movies' first American sex goddess. The star of Wings, the first film to win the Best Picture Oscar, Clara Bow's unhappy life, in many ways, paralleled that of her successor, Marilyn Monroe. A longtime victim of insomnia, Ms. Bow lies awake on the morning of her estranged husband's funeral and painfully remembers the mentally ill mother who once tried to kill her; her career as the ultimate "flapper" her many nervous breakdowns; and affairs with the likes of Gary Cooper, Gilbert Roland, director Victor Fleming, and, as is said, the USC football team.

Although he had a long career as an actor and director, Paul Henreid is certainly best remembered for two films he made in the early 1940s: Now, Voyager with Bette Davis, and Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. Michael B. Druxman’s Paul Henreid is set in 1968 and finds the actor in Nice, France, about to costar in a film with Katharine Hepburn. He has just learned that his friend, the movie’s original director, has quit the production and must decide whether he will do the same.

He was “Ben-Hur", “Moses” in The Ten Commandments, and he did battle with the Planet of the Apes. During his long career, Charlton Heston projected an unequaled image of strength and authority, tempered with compassion and wisdom. Charlton Heston, Michael B. Druxman’s one-person stage play, finds the Oscar-winning actor in his final years, shortly after it has been discovered that he suffers from Alzheimer’s Disease. Struggling to hold onto his memories, he thinks back on his life; its many successes, as well as its disappointments. One actor; one set.

Abe Vigoda worked as an actor for all of his adult life. He did theatre...He did television...But it wasn’t until he was 50-years-old that he got a role where the public even noticed him. He played Tessio in The Godfather. Michael B. Druxman’s humorous one-person play, Abe Vigoda, finds the actor with a major problem. The press has, erroneously, announced that he is dead, and his agent’s phone has stopped ringing. Now, Abe has to convince the entertainment industry that he is still with us.

In Michael B. Druxman's outrageous comedy, Hail on the Chief!, cantankerous gentleman rancher Oliver Pettridge hates his neighbor, a former cowboy movie star. He's hated him for years over a property line dispute. As the play begins, the neighbor has just been elected President of the United States.

Merv Griffin had a way with stars. They loved him, and he’d given that “big break” to countless young hopefuls who became major celebrities, including Sonny and Cher, Dick Cavett, Richard Pryor, and Tony Orlando and Dawn. Merv was one of America’s best-loved TV personalities. Millions of fans were hooked on his sincerity, intelligence, and showmanship. Merv worked hard to get to the top. Here is the true public, private, and on-stage life of the man who won the hearts of America.

Jack Oakie’s forte was comedy. He appeared in over 100 motion pictures, mostly as a good-natured, somewhat dim-witted buffoon, and often in his early films, in a college setting. Although he co-starred with the likes of Clara Bow, W. C. Fields, Bing Crosby, Alice Faye, Betty Grable, and Doris Day, his most durable performances were in The Call of the Wild (1935) with Clark Gable and Loretta Young, and The Great Dictator (1940) in which he spoofed Benito Mussolini to Charlie Chaplin’s Adolph Hitler.

Peter Lorre, Michael B. Druxman’s one-person stage play, finds the famous actor in poor health near the end of his life. He contemplates his third divorce and ponders how he will provide for his young daughter, while remembering the greener years that he spent with the likes of Humphrey Bogart, John Huston, and Sydney Greenstreet. One simple set.

Orson Welles is a one-person play in two acts about the life and times of Orson Welles. Some say that Orson Welles was a genius, but he always denied that. He did give us Citizen Kane, considered by most critics to be the best film ever made, but after that, his career took one long downward plunge. The play finds Welles trying to find the financing for one of his film projects. It's a difficult task, since most of the Hollywood community considers him to be a "screwball".

Ida Lupino was a trail-blazer. Not only was she one of the most vibrant Hollywood actresses of the 1940s and 1950s, but she was also only the second woman to become a member of the Director's Guild. Michael B. Druxman's one-woman play, Ida: The Last Lupino, joins Ida in 1983 when she is living alone in her decaying Brentwood home as a virtual hermit, lamenting the break-up of her marriage with Howard Duff. Ida: The Last Lupino is a vivid, often witty, portrait of a woman who conquered a man's world.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a revisionist history of Hollywood's Golden Era and the tabloid press that covered it. Harry Pennypacker was a prolific and revered newspaper columnist; a colleague of Louella Parsons, Walter Winchell, and the other great columnists of the day.

Unfortunately, nobody has ever heard of him because the papers never ran his articles. They were too hot. Too dangerous. Too likely to tarnish the delicate image of silver screen icons. The newspaper syndicate couldn't fire him because he had an ironclad contract, so Pennypacker wrote his stories...and the editors buried them. Until now.

Dick Powell made a career of reinventing himself. Born in Arkansas, the young tenor played horn and banjo, and sang with various dance bands and orchestras in Pittsburgh and elsewhere before he was brought to Hollywood, where he sang opposite Ruby Keeler and others in such classic Busby Berkeley musicals as 42nd Street, Footlight Parade, Gold Diggers of 1935, and the Al Jolson film, Wonder Bar.

A native of New Jersey, Roy Scheider was his own man. He did his work well and was not afraid to butt heads with producers and directors with whom he disagreed, even to the detriment of his career. Michael B. Druxman’s Roy Scheider & the Bigger Boat finds the actor in 2002 during a lull in his career. He hasn’t done a major film for several years, as he ponders how he can change his luck.