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Henry Silva, a character actor known for playing bad guys and gangsters in movies like “The Manchurian Candidate” and “Ocean’s 11,” has died.

Silva died Wednesday of natural causes at the Motion Picture Picture and Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, his son Scott Silva confirmed to Variety. He was 95.

The stage and screen actor, whose career spanned 50 years and 140 TV and film credits, was also an honorary member of The Rat Pack. He starred alongside Frank Sinatra in both “Ocean’s 11” (1960) and “The Manchurian Candidate,” (1962) in which he played one of the 11 casino robbers in the classic caper film. Also in 1962, they both appeared in “Sergeants 3” and would go on to collaborate on the TV movie “Contract on Cherry Street” (1977) and “Cannonball Run II” (1984) with Dean Martin.

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Henry Fuhrmann, Longtime LA Times Editor Who Championed Inclusive Writing in Journalism, Dies at 65

In the wake of the news,...

Henry Silva, an actor with a striking look who often played villains and had credits in hundreds of films including “Ocean’s Eleven” and “The Manchurian Candidate,” died of natural causes Wednesday at the Motion Picture Picture and Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, Calif., his son Scott confirmed. He was 95.

One of Silva’s most memorable roles came in John Frankenheimer’s classic thriller “The Manchurian Candidate” (1962), in which he played Chunjin, the Korean houseboy for Laurence Harvey’s Raymond Shaw — and an agent for the Communists — who engages in a thrilling, well-choreographed martial arts battle with Frank Sinatra’s Major Bennett Marco in Shaw’s New York apartment.

Silva appeared in a number of other movies with Sinatra, including the original, Rat Pack-populated “Ocean’s Eleven” (1960) with Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr., where he was one of the 11 thieves, and 1962 Western “Sergeants 3.”

His death was...

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Henry Silva, the rugged New York actor who portrayed heavies and heroes of various ethnicities in a career highlighted by turns in A Hatful of Rain, The Manchurian Candidate and Johnny Cool, has died. He was 95.

Silva died Wednesday of natural causes at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, his son Scott Silva told The Hollywood Reporter.

Silva also played the Draconian commander “Killer” Kane in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979), just one in a lineup of his bad guys seen in The Tall T (1957), The Bravados (1958), Il Boss (1973), Sharky’s Machine (1981), Above the Law (1988), Dick Tracy (1990) and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999).

“Henry Silva is one of those guys you most likely will recognize even if you don’t know his name,” onetime Crimespree magazine writer Dave Wahlman wrote in 2016. “His face is something straight...

Celebrating the release of his new memoir, multi-hyphenate Steven Van Zandt joins hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante to discuss a few of his favorite movies.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Elevator To The Gallows (1958) – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Breathless (1960) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

Angels With Dirty Faces (1938)

The Fisher King (1991)

Tony Rome (1967)

Lady In Cement (1968)

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

The Killer (1989)

True Romance (1993)

True Lies (1994)

Get Shorty (1995) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

Point Blank (1967) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Catch Us If You Can a.k.a. Sweet Memories (1965)

Double Trouble (1967)

Performance (1970) – Mark Goldblatt’s trailer commentary

The Driver (1978)

A Hard Day’s Night (1964) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary, Tfh’s Don’t Knock The Rock piece

Help! (1965) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary, Charlie Largent’s review

Blue Collar (1978) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s...

Exclusive: Lee Daniels and his Lee Daniels Entertainment have teamed with Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman’s Playtone to develop a miniseries about dancer-singer-actor-musician Sammy Davis Jr., I have learned.

The project, titled Sammy, is still in preliminary stages, but I hear the producers are circling the 2003 book In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr. by Wil Haygood as source material.

For Lee, bringing Davis’ story to the screen has been a longtime passion; in 2013 there were reports about him eyeing a movie about the former Rat Pack-er that was in the works at HBO.

Meanwhile, Playtone brings in a strong track record with a slew of Emmy-winning miniseries including Band Of Brothers, The Pacific, John Adams and Olive Kitteridge.

There have been multiple attempts at a Sammy Davis, Jr. biopic, most recently a project set at Paramount Pictures last year with producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Lionel Richie...

The Sammy David Jr. biopic is set up at Paramount Pictures and it will be produced by Transformers producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura. According to Deadline, the project is on the fast track and they are in the process of hiring a writer and director to take on the life of the iconic entertainer who could do it all.

The movie will be based on the 1965 memoir Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. that he penned with Jane and Burt Boyar. Davis’ heirs are also joining a producing team, which will also include Lionel Richie.

Apparently, Richie was the key to getting all the right deals done to be able to bring Davis’ story to the big screen. In a statement, he said:

“I cannot tell you how excited I am about the signing of the Sammy Davis Jr. project with Paramount. I knew and loved Sammy dearly.

Exclusive: The biopic about Sammy Davis, Jr. now has been set up at Paramount Pictures, where producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura has his overall deal. The project is on the development fast track, soon to be hiring a writer and a director to make the feature film about the dancer-singer-actor-musician to becoming a reality.

The movie will be based in large part on the 1965 memoir Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. that he penned with Jane and Burt Boyar.

Davis’ heirs are joining a producing team led by Lionel Richie, di Bonaventura and Mike Menchel. The latter two most recently joined forces for Only the Brave, the feature about the 19 firefighting heroes who died during the 2013 Yarnell Hill fire in Arizona.

Richie was the key to getting all the rights deals done to be able to bring Davis’ story to the masses. “I cannot tell you how excited...

Unbridled Passion by Howard Hughes

Following the release in March of ‘A Man Called Gannon’ (1968), Simply Media in the UK continue to release more Universal-International westerns, this time of 1940s and ‘50s vintage. The new releases, out on 18 April, are ‘Calamity Jane & Sam Bass’ (1949), ‘Cattle Drive’ (1951) and ‘Black Horse Canyon’ (1954). This trio of films are literally ‘Horse Operas’, with the accent on thoroughbred steeds and their importance and role in the working west. Be they cattle drovers, stock breeders or outlaws, where would any of them be without the horse? The answer, of course, is walking.

I’ll review the DVDs in the order I watched them. First up is ‘Cattle Drive’, a 1951 western directed by Kurt Neumann. Chester Graham Jnr (Dean Stockwell), the spoilt, arrogant son of railroad magnet Chester Graham Snr (Leon Ames), is accidentally left behind when the train he is travelling on makes a water stop.

 

You asked for it, you got it! Following our successful Movie Magic Tour of British film locations in 2010, Cinema Retro and T.W.I.N.E. Tours will be announcing specifics pertaining to the September 2011 tour. This time, we'll be heading out West to visit film locations from classic movies. We'll be meeting up in Las Vegas then movin' on by deluxe motorcoach to such legendary sites as:

Monument Valley, Utah- site of such films as Stagecoach, 2001: A Space Odyssey, How the West Was Won, Easy Rider, Once Upon a Time in the West, Forrest Gump, The Searchers, The Eiger Sanction and many more. Kanab, Utah- visit the sets from Clint Eastwood's The Outlaw Josey Wales and see where such films as Sergeants 3, Planet of the Apes, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Bandolero! and many others were filmed. Ride the legendary old-fashioned steam engine line from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid...

By Matt Singer and Alison Willmore

DVD box sets remain the go-to gift for any film fan in your life -- they come in a range of sizes and prices, so that you can scale up or down depending on how much you like the recipient, and this time of year they're often discounted for last-minute holiday shoppers (and those treating themselves to a present). Here are the new or revamped box sets from 2008 that we've been eyeing:

Mystery Science Theater 3000 20th Anniversary Edition

Shout Factory, $59.99

"Mystery Science Theater 3000"'s inaugural release from Shout Factory (after many years and discs with Rhino Records) celebrates the show's 20th anniversary with a spiffy box set featuring four never-released-to-dvd episodes: "Werewolf" (with the "great" Joe Estevez), "Future War," "First Spaceship on Venus" and the long-awaited and highly coveted "Laserblast," the final episode on Comedy Central. The set also includes an 80-minute documentary on the show's MSTory,...

Comedian Joey Bishop, the last surviving male member of Frank Sinatra's legendary "Rat Pack" who appeared in such films as Ocean's Eleven and Sergeant's 3, died Wednesday night of multiple causes at his home in Newport Beach, CA; he was 89. The Bronx-born Bishop pursued a career in stand-up comedy both before and after World War II, and caught the attention of Sinatra during a Manhattan gig in 1952. Soon after, Bishop was opening for Sinatra's concerts nationwide, and also began appearing in films and on numerous talk shows. He also became a famed member of Sinatra's Rat Pack, which also consisted of Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford and Dean Martin (Shirley MacLaine is also considered something of an honorary member). The male quintet appeared in the 1960 crime caper Ocean's Eleven, and performed nightly at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas during filming; the next year, Bishop was asked to be the emcee for President John F. Kennedy's inaugural ball (produced by Sinatra). Away from the Rat Pack, Bishop starred for four years in the sitcom The Joey Bishop Show, which ran from 1961-65. He was also a frequent guest, and guest host, for such TV talk show kings as Jack Paar and Johnny Carson, and briefly had his own talk show in the late 60s. Bishop made fewer and fewer appearances throughout the 70s, occasionally popping up on a variety of television shows ranging from Match Game to Murder, She Wrote, and in a few films, the last two being Betsy's Wedding (1990) and Mad Dog Time (1996). Bishop is survived by his son, Larry.