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As the Venice Film Festival prepares to celebrate its 90th anniversary, researchers have reconstructed how Stanley Kubrick’s first film, now known as “Fear and Desire,” came to screen on the Lido in 1952.

The screening of the film, initially titled “Shape of Fear,” took place at the Palazzo del Cinema on the Lido on Aug. 18, 1952, in a section called Festival of the Scientific Film and Art Documentary.

Basically, Kubrick’s debut was invited for a special screening after not making the cut for competition due to “the length and character of the film,” as an exchange of letters between the 23-year-old Kubrick and then Venice chief Antonio Petrucci attests (see below).

The whole story has been reconstructed for the first time in the letters and documents preserved in the archives of the fest’s parent organization, the Venice Biennale, ahead of an international conference celebrating the 90th anniversary of the world’s oldest film festival,...

Rip actress Virginia Leith, the star of  Stanley Kubricks' first feature "Fear and Desire"( 1953) and the low-budget shocker "The Brain That Wouldn't Die", released in 1962:

Following the Kubrick film, Leith signed a contract with 20th Century-Fox and had leading roles in "Violent Saturday" (1955), "On the Threshold of Space" (1956), "Toward the Unknown" (1956) and "A Kiss Before Dying" (1956).

Leith completed the feature "The Black Door" (1955), but it wouldn't be released until 1962, under the title "The Brain That Wouldn't Die".

"...'Dr. Bill Cortner' (Jason Evers) saves a patient who had been pronounced dead, but the senior surgeon, Cortner's father (Bruce Brighton), condemns his son's unorthodox methods and transplant theories.

"While driving to his family's country house, Cortner and his beautiful fiancée 'Jan Compton' (Leith) get into a car accident that decapitates Jan. Cortner recovers her severed head and rushes to his country house basement laboratory. He and his crippled assistant 'Kurt' (Anthony La Penna...

Virginia Leith, the star of Stanley Kubrick’s first movie “Fear and Desire,” has died at the age of 94.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Leith died at her home in Palm Springs, California on Nov. 4 after a brief illness.

Kubrick’s 1953 film served as Leith’s acting debut, though the director famously disavowed the work, at one point referring to it as a “bumbling amateur film exercise.” Leith, whose character in the war film is unnamed, appeared as a young girl killed by a soldier.

Also Read: Hollywood's Notable Deaths of 2019 (Photos)

After her role in “Fear and Desire,” Leith signed as a contract player with 20th Century Fox, going on to appear in “On the Threshold of Space,” “Violent Saturday,” “A Kiss Before Dying” and “Toward the Unknown.”

She played the lead role in Joseph Green’s “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die” as the wife of a mad...

Virginia Leith, a model and actress who starred in Stanley Kubrick’s debut feature Fear and Desire, has died. She was 94.

She passed away in Palm Springs on November 4 after a brief illness, according to family spokesperson Jane Chalmers.

Leith met Kubrick when he was a photographer and shot her for the cover of Look magazine. Once Kubrick made the transition to film, he cast her in Fear and Desire as a “half-animal” peasant girl captured and eventually killed by a soldier played by Paul Mazursky. The 1953 war film generated lukewarm interest at the box office, and after distributor Joseph Burstyn died, it was taken out of circulation.

Kubrick was no fan of the finished product and was said to have destroyed the original negative. He released a statement through Warner Bros., calling the movie “a bumbling amateur film exercise.”

In 1954 Leith became a contract player for 20th Century Fox...

Actress and model Virginia Leith, who starred in Stanley Kubrick’s first film “Fear and Desire,” which he later disavowed, has died. She was 94.

According to family spokesperson Jane Chalmers, Leith died after a brief illness at her home in Palm Springs, Calif. on Nov. 4.

Born on Oct. 15, 1925, Leith met Kubrick in the 1950s when he shot her for the cover of Look magazine.

“Fear and Desire,” which received moderately positive critical reviews upon its release, was not a box office success. After distributor Joseph Burstyn died, the film fell out of circulation and Kubrick is said to have destroyed the original negative and any other prints he could find. Some original prints still exist, however, and Film Forum organized a screening in 1994. Kubrick released a statement through Warner Bros. at the time, calling it “a bumbling amateur film exercise” and urging press not to attend.

Following her appearance in “Fear and Desire,...

Virginia Leith, who starred in Fear and Desire, the first feature directed by Stanley Kubrick, before turning in her most famous role — that of a disembodied head in a pan in the schlock classic The Brain That Wouldn't Die — has died. She was 94.

Leith died Nov. 4 at her home in Palm Springs, family spokesperson Jane Chalmers announced.

Leith also was a contract player at 20th Century Fox, where she appeared in Richard Fleischer's Violent Saturday (1955) opposite Victor Mature and Richard Egan and portrayed the sister of Joanne Woodward who falls for Robert Wagner's ...

Virginia Leith, who starred in Fear and Desire, the first feature directed by Stanley Kubrick, before turning in her most famous role — that of a disembodied head in a pan in the schlock classic The Brain That Wouldn't Die — has died. She was 94.

Leith died Nov. 4 at her home in Palm Springs, family spokesperson Jane Chalmers announced.

Leith also was a contract player at 20th Century Fox, where she appeared in Richard Fleischer's Violent Saturday (1955) opposite Victor Mature and Richard Egan and portrayed the sister of Joanne Woodward who falls for Robert Wagner's ...

Fox touted Black Widow as the first murder mystery in CinemaScope. Ace writer / tyro director Nunnally Johnson tries an ‘All About Eve’ dissection of Broadway swells but in a mystery context, with beaucoup flashbacks. The result is something akin to Rope, with scenes all taking place in apartments with views of Central Park. Nobody complained about the big marquee names Ginger Rogers, Van Heflin, Gene Tierney and George Raft, but I re-watch to marvel over the dreamy, interesting Virginia Leith. Raymond Durgnat encouraged us to indulge our screen fantasies!

Black Widow

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1954 / Color / 2:55 widescreen / 95 min. / Street Date October 16, 2018 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95

Starring Ginger Rogers, Van Heflin, Gene Tierney, George Raft, Peggy Ann Garner, Reginald Gardiner, Virginia Leith, Otto Kruger, Cathleen Nesbitt, Skip Homeier

Cinematography Charles G. Clarke

Art Direction Maurice Ransford, Lyle R. Wheeler

Film Editor Dorothy Spencer

Original Music Leigh Harline

Written...

Filmed in 1959 but not released until Aip picked it up in ’62, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die is a weird little treasure that deserved to be saved from the wreckage. It surpasses all yardsticks of measurement such as taste or talent, and instead floats to the surface on sheer strangeness and a stringent commitment to sleaze. Man cannot live on refinement alone.

Released in May after Aip purchased it and thrown to the wolves on a double feature with Invasion of the Star Creatures, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (Aka The Head That Wouldn’t Die) came and went like the patrons at a Dusk to Dawn bill by the local drive-in. Mass production on the public domain line ensured faded memories and dimmed shocks until Mystery Science Theater 3000 gave it new life. Regardless of how you’ve come to it, Brain still retains the title of best...

Robert Wagner as a social climbing psycho killer? I knew it! 'Mr. CinemaScope Smile' grins only once or twice in this movie, and then only to fool an unsuspecting woman. A great cast brings tension to Ira Levin's outrageous tale of murder. Joanne Woodward has a powerful role, but my heartthrob this time out is lovely Virginia Leith. A Kiss Before Dying Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1956 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 95 min. / Street Date May 3, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Robert Wagner, Jeffrey Hunter, Virginia Leith, Joanne Woodward, Mary Astor, George Macready, Robert Quarry. Cinematography Lucien Ballard Art Direction Addison Hehr Film Editor George A. Gittens Original Music Lionel Newman Written by Lawrence Roman from a novel by Ira Levin Produced by Robert L. Jacks Directed by Gerd Oswald

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

It's a safe bet that a huge chunk of Americans now identify Robert Wagner as the father of Anthony Dinozzo on TV's NCIS.

or, Savant picks The Most Impressive Discs of 2015

This is the actual view from Savant Central, looking due North.

What a year! I was able to take one very nice trip back East too see Washington D.C. for the first time, or at least as much as two days' walking in the hot sun and then cool rain would allow. Back home in Los Angeles, we've had a year of extreme drought -- my lawn is looking patriotically ratty -- and we're expecting something called El Niño, that's supposed to be just shy of Old-Testament build-me-an-ark intensity. We withstood heat waves like those in Day the Earth Caught Fire, and now we'll get the storms part. This has been a wild year for DVD Savant, which is still a little unsettled. DVDtalk has been very patient and generous, and so have Stuart Galbraith & Joe Dante; so far everything...

Forget your 'Jan in the Pan' jokes and all those 'thing in the closet' remarks about gay subtext. This loopy, kooky and kinky horror offering from New York's Tarrytown is a keeper despite its primitive direction and campy screenplay. Mad scientist Herb Evers answered the call to Bring Me the Head of Virginia Leith, and goes on a sleazy shopping spree to find a voluptuous body to make her complete, in the literal sense. It's all in the worst of taste: in other words, delightful. The Brain that Wouldn't Die Blu-ray Scream Factory 1962 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 81 min. / Street Date December 22, 2015 / 26.99 Starring Herb (Jason) Evers, Virginia Leith, Leslie Daniels, Adele Lamont, Bonnie Sharie, Paula Maurice, Marilyn Hanold, Bruce Brighton Cinematography Stephen Hajnal Special Effects Byron Baer Art Direction Paul Fanning Film Editors Leonard Anderson, Marc Anderson Original Music Abe Baker, Tony Restaino Written by Rex Carlton and Joseph Green Produced by Rex Carlton,...

"Her brain kept alive by experimental science." The folks at Scream Factory will take viewers back to the mad doctor's lab with their upcoming Blu-ray debut of Joseph Green's The Brain That Wouldn't Die. Ahead of the Blu-ray's December 22nd release, we have a look at the cover art and list of special features.

Press Release: Medical science leaps light years into the future in the 1962 sci-fi cult classic The Brain That Wouldn’T Die, starring Herb Evers (Escape from the Planet of the Apes, 1971), Virginia Leith (Stanley Kubrick’s Fear and Desire) and Leslie Daniel (Johnny Yuma). Directed by Joseph Green, this campy sci-fi/horror classic explores the strange world of transplants, cloning and mutant regeneration. On December 22, 2015, Scream Factory™ will release the special Blu-ray™ edition of The Brain That Wouldn’T Die on home entertainment shelves. Available for the first time on Blu-ray, this definitive home entertainment...

James Garner movies on TCM: ‘Grand Prix,’ ‘Victor Victoria’ among highlights (photo: James Garner ca. 1960) James Garner, whose film and television career spanned more than five decades, died of "natural causes" at age 86 on July 19, 2014, in the Los Angeles suburb of Brentwood. On Monday, July 28, Turner Classic Movies will present an all-day marathon of James Garner movies (see below) as a tribute to the Oscar-nominated star of Murphy’s Romance and Emmy-winning star of the television series The Rockford Files. Among the highlights in TCM’s James Garner film lineup is John Frankenheimer’s Monaco-set Grand Prix (1966), an all-star, race-car drama featuring Garner as a Formula One driver who has an affair with the wife (Jessica Walter) of his former teammate (Brian Bedford). Among the other Grand Prix drivers facing their own personal issues are Yves Montand and Antonio Sabato, while Akira Kurosawa’s (male) muse Toshiro Mifune plays a...

Turner Classic Movies (TCM) will remember award-winning actor James Garner on Monday, July 28, with an all-day marathon featuring 12 of his films. The Oscar nominated actor passed away on Saturday in Los Angeles at age 86.

TCM’s lineup features Garner’s performances in such movies as Toward the Unknown (1956), which marked his film debut; the racing drama Grand Prix (1966); the popular romantic comedy The Thrill of It All (1963); the Paddy Cheyefsky-penned The Americanization of Emily (1964); the groundbreaking drama The Children’s Hour(1961); and the gender-bending Victor/Victoria (1982).

The following is the complete schedule for TCM’s tribute to James Garner.

TCM Remembers James Garner – Monday, July 28

6 a.m. – Toward the Unknown (1956) – starring William Holden, Lloyd Nolan, Virginia Leith and James Garner

8 a.m. – Shoot-Out at Medicine Bend (1957) – starring Randolph Scott, James Craig, Angie Dickinson and James Garner

9:30 a.m. – Grand Prix (1966) – starring James Garner, Eva Marie Saint, Brian Bedford and Yves Montand

12:30 p.

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Oct. 23, 2012

Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $34.95

Studio: Kino Lorber

A squad of soldiers unwinds behind enemy lines in Stanley Kubrick's 1953 Fear and Desire.

Virtually unseen since its theatrical premiere in 1953, Fear and Desire was the ambitious first feature film by legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick (A Clockwork Orange).

An existential war film often compared with the director’s Paths of Glory (1957) and Full Metal Jacket (1987), Fear and Desire follows a squad of soldiers who have crash-landed behind enemy lines and must work their way downriver to rejoin their unit. In the process, they encounter a peasant girl (Virginia Leith) and bind her to a tree, where she is tormented by a mentally unbalanced soldier (future director Paul Mazursky). Before making their escape, the soldiers determine the location of an enemy base and formulate a plot to assassinate its commanding officer.

The 60-minute-long film was produced, directed, photographed and...

Get ready, Stanley Kubrick completists, because Kino Lorber have some very exciting news for you today. Nearly 60 years after it first hit theaters, and then subsequently disappeared, only to be seen in shoddy bootlegs, the company is finally giving the iconic director's first film "Fear And Desire" a proper DVD and Blu-ray release this fall, in a newly restored edition of the film from the Library Of Congress. But as Kubrick himself admitted, this was a movie that was very much from a first time filmmaker (he was 24 years old at the time). Describing it at one time as "a bumbling amateur film exercise," the movie stars future filmmaker Paul Mazursky and Virginia Leith, and follows a squad of soldiers who have crash-landed behind enemy lines and must work their way downriver to rejoin their unit. In the process, they encounter a peasant girl (Leith) and tie her to a tree,...

This year, New Directors/New Films is "breaking precedent and presenting a film nearly 20 years older than the festival itself."

Nick Schager in Slant: "So loathed by Stanley Kubrick that the legendary director reportedly confiscated all existing copies to keep it out of circulation, Fear and Desire proves a modest, if relatively promising, 1953 debut for the late auteur, touching on his trademark themes via the allegorical tale of soldiers shot down behind enemy lines in an unnamed country in an unspecified time. Kubrick's story, penned by Howard Sackler, is deliberately vague with regard to nationalities and politics so that its focus can remain squarely on the psychological turmoil of its characters, a ragtag quartet that includes ruminative Lieutenant Corby (Kenneth Harp), gruff Sergeant Mac (Frank Silvera), meek Private Fletcher (Stephen Colt), and sensitive Private Sidney (future filmmaker Paul Mazursky) — men whose narrated internal monologues articulate, with frequent pretentiousness, Kubrick's investigation...

The Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art have announced that they'll be presenting 29 features and 12 shorts in the 41st edition of New Directors/New Films, running March 21 through April 1). The series, dedicated to "the discovery of new works by emerging and dynamic filmmaking talent," opens with Nadine Labaki's Where Do We Go Now? (see the Cannes roundup). A few notes on the other features:

The Ambassador (Mads Brügger). The La Weekly's Karina Longworth suggests that Brügger is "sort of the Vice magazine version of Sacha Baron Cohen, as financed by Lars von Trier. His last film was The Red Chapel, an exercise in hidden camera comedy with unusual socio-political stakes, which I put on my top 10 list for 2010." In "his hilarious, troubling new film," Brügger poses as "a diplomat in Africa, a decadent Westerner plundering a third-world nation…. For a six-figure outlay, Brugger is promised a Liberian passport,...

Joanne Woodward on TCM: Rachel, Rachel; Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am Count Three And Pray (1955) A Westerner turns preacher to overcome his shady past. Dir: George Sherman. Cast: Van Heflin, Joanne Woodward, Phil Carey. C-102 mins. 7:45 Am Rally Round The Flag, Boys! (1958) The arrival of an Army missile base shatters the peaceful life of a suburban town. Dir: Leo McCarey. Cast: Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Joan Collins. C-107 mins, Letterbox Format. 9:45 Am Paris Blues (1961) Two jazz musicians deal with romantic problems in Paris. Dir: Martin Ritt. Cast: Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Sidney Poitier. C-99 mins, Letterbox Format. 11:30 Am Signpost To Murder (1964) A convicted murderer, who escaped from a mental institution, hides out in the home of a woman whose husband is missing. Dir: George Englund. Cast: Joanne Woodward, Stuart Whitman, Edward Mulhare. Bw-77 mins, Letterbox Format. 1:00 Pm...

Joanne Woodward never became a major box-office draw. No matter. Woodward was one of the best film actresses of the 20th century, as can be attested by her work in The Three Faces of Eve; Rachel, Rachel (right); Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams; The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds; and Mr. and Mrs. Bridge. Woodward's absence from the big screen after a supporting role in Jonathan Demme's 1993 AIDS drama Philadelphia is indeed cinema's loss. On Tuesday, August 16, Turner Classic Movies will be presenting 13 Joanne Woodward movies as part of TCM's "Summer Under the Stars" film series. [Joanne Woodward Movie Schedule.] Four of those are TCM premieres: Leo McCarey's weak comedy Rally Round the Flag, Boys! (1958), with Paul Newman as Woodward's love interest, and Joan Collins sultrily stealing the show; Burt Reynolds' highly successful black comedy The End (1978), about a dying man's attempts at killing himself with the assistance of a...