Day: August 25, 2013

An 8.25 N.Y. Times story by Michael Cieply and Julie Bosman passes along information that “at least five additional books” by the late J.D. Salinger, “some of them entirely new, some extending past work,” will be published beginning in 2015. The reclusive Salinger, who died in 2010 at age 91, stopped publishing new material in the early ’60s. The information about the new writings is contained in Shane Salerno‘s Salinger (Weinstein Co. 9.6), a documentary that no one I know has seen or has even been invited to see. What’s up with that?

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I don’t have the experience to eulogize the great Julie Harris, who died yesterday in West Chatham, Massachusetts at age 87. I never saw her once on the New York stage, where she shined the brightest and most consistently, and haven’t seen that many of her films. For decades I’ve associated Harris with only three screen performances: Abra in Elia Kazan‘s East of Eden (one of my favorite female characters of all time), the neurotic, spinsterish Eleanor in Robert Wise‘s The Haunting and Grace Marsh (i.e., Anthony Quinn‘s friend and supporter) in Ralph Nelson‘s Requiem for a Heavyweight. Three films in a seven-year stretch — ’55, ’61 and ’62.

Julie Harris with James Dean during the ferris-wheel scene in Elia Kazan’s East of Eden.

Harris in Robert Wise’s The Haunting (which will be released on Bluray on 10.15).

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