I love talking about movies but Ive never been able to organize movie-night get-togethers So this is the next best thing On Tuesdays Im going to spotlight a DVD and suggest some virtual-discussion startersIn honor of the late great Jack Palance born Vladimir Palahnuik in 1919 who died on November 10 age 87 my recommendation this week is Panic in the Streets 1950 Shot on location in New Orleans Elia Kazans thriller stars Richard Widmark as a US Public Health Service investigator forced to infiltrate the citys seedy underbelly in hopes of preventing an outbreak of the plague In an age when emerging diseases can travel across the world in 24 hours the story is still all too timely Palance plays petty gangster Blackie whos been exposed to the plague virus Its an electrifying movie debut Anyone who thinks of this actor only as the feisty old guy doing one-armed push-ups at the 1991 Academy Awards ceremony when he won an Oscar for his comic supporting pe
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Stage and screen star Barbara Bel Geddes, best known for playing Dallas matriarch Miss Ellie, died at her home in Northeast Harbor, Maine, on Monday, the San Francisco Gate reports. The cause of death was lung cancer. Bel Geddes was 82. The daughter of famed theatrical set designer Norman Bel Geddes, the actress started her career on Broadway, then made her film debut in 1947's The Long Night. Not two years later, she garnered her first Oscar nod, for I Remember Mama. Her other noteworthy projects include Elia Kazan's Panic in the Streets,
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