Actress Lee Grant Appreciation Thread.

For better or worse she appeared in that camp classic movie, Valley Of The Dolls.

With her Oscar.

She's 97, looks damn good.

Wonderful as the prosecutor in Defending Your Life.

She was a hoot in Damien - Omen II!

Okay...NOW I understand why Ronan Farrow colours his hair.

Have always loved her. Had no idea she was 97!! ( Or was that a joke? I'm gonna check that out.)

She’s 92.

R7 Her age is in dispute. She was born in the mid 1920's. She's anywhere from 92 to 96 years old.

Either way, the fact she's walking and talking is impressive.

Her very first movie, Detective Story, with Kirk Douglas.

So young.

Lee has a white pussy.

She lies about her age constantly. When your old wtf difference does it make? I’m a fan and do admire her for having a second successful career after the blacklist.

Plastic surgery.

Trying to hold back the ravages of time.

She and Don Knots played a married couple on Search for Tomorrow

Lee Grant discusses being on "Search"

Paparazzi catches up with Lee Grant at the airport, and she is NOT wearing any make-up

As a teen , I watched her sitcom Fay. She earned a Primetime Emmy nomination.

As the years went on Lee Grant did documentaries. She interviewed Grace Kelly in Monaco and found the Princess to be lonely and unhappy.

Has she talked frankly about her plastic surgery? It’s such a shame she did that to herself.

r21, she denies having any work done.

She does talk about the surgery and the age lying. She feels since she lost like 10 years of a career at what would have been the peak age for actresses she has always had a sever problem with wanting to be younger. She admits to having a facelift at 30 because she was so screwed up with that issue.

ignore r22

rkm / R19 Many said the sitcom "Faye" had a similar blue-print to the Golden Girls (both series created by Susan Harris)

As you watched both, do think there were many similarities?

on Faye:

Did Warren Beatty pump her? He literally pumped half of Hollywood.

Way to trivialize DL. Can we talk about her career or her blacklisting?

She's wonderful but what she did to her face is tragic.

She was a great Ado Annie in one of the national companies of Oklahoma!

R21 Deary this is not the New York Times, this is Datalounge. This is a gossip site. So her plastic surgery, her sex life and everything else under the sun is under review as well.

Met her last month at the Chiller Theatre autograph show. Very nice woman. She was really happy when I asked her to sign a DVD of the film she directed, "Staying Together". She even took it over to show her daughter. She get thanking me for bringing it. It was a great moment.

r30, what does that have to do with what r21 said?

R26 wouldn’t be surprised. She talks in an interview on Inside the Actors Studio how he tried to direct her in a scene in Shampoo (even though Hal Ashby was directing) she basically told him mind your own business. Then he said what do I know ive only been doing this for years, then all was forgiven. Beatty charmed the pants off every woman in Hollywood. Why not her?

I don't think he did, though.

Love her

Some more thoughts about Fay, Golden Girls and TV in general -- Fay premiered in fall 1975, at the same time as another show about a single woman of a certain age, Phyllis. I'd have watched both shows, but I imagine Phyllis was the easier sell. Also, Lee supposedly turned down GG because she didn't want to play a grandma. She did in Fay. "(in response to Fay's daughter using her son for guilt-tripping) Tell him Nana's getting it on!"

Last thing I remember seeing her in was Randal Kleiser's "It's My Party", playing the doomed Eric Roberts' mother. She was great!

As a gayling, I confused her name with Lee Remick and my mother nearly slapped my face viciously. She made an appointment with an ophthalmologist shortly afterward.

She's a tough old broad, and I mean that as a compliment. Been through the wringer, but was always scrappy enough to keep going, all the way to an Oscar win.

She's my favorite thing about Airport '77.

Lee Grant said that the last good movie she made was Defending Your Life with Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep in 1991.

TCM tribute

Funny that she was on the first Susan Harris sitcoms and turned down GG and then her daughter of course was on Empty Nest. Which was a crap show but Dinah Manoff was always very funny - she deserved a better vehicle.

Defending Your Life was a great movie.

She gave us Dinah Manoff, R42? Holy Shit, awesome sauce, whatever. That is so cool. Thanks for the information.

She deserved the Supporting Actress Oscar for Voyage of the Damned. Her scene in front of the mirror shearing her hair was heartbreaking. And it was her own hair!

I love Lee Grant but have always been confused by the 'blacklisting'. Check out her imdb page. She worked steadily from 1951 on. Yes it was mostly TV series and a few movies but if the powers that be were trying to prevent a 'communist sympathizer' from appearing why would they let her be in your living room on TV that entire decade? At least the TCM tribute notes she had 'minimal' work and wiki says 'limited work' but from 1951 to 1961 she was in 22 projects. How did TV producers hire her without being blacklisted themselves? Writers and directors who were blacklisted had to do work under fake names, but Lee Grant was on everyone's TV during that time using her real name.

Was she a victim of Blacklist Light?

I enjoyed her book, but in it she makes it sound as if she didn't work at all yet she averaged two projects a year during her blacklist.

I love her writing about her and Faye Dunaway in Voyage of the Damned. She said Faye was so beautiful she looked gorgeous with only a harsh flashlight for lighting.

R45 I read her memoir and when people were blacklisted by the HUAC other people in show business were extremely reluctant to hire them for fear of being blacklisted themselves. Blacklisted artists were allowed to do some TV work and plays but no major movies. It was a very tense, difficult time. Faye was one of the last people to get off the blacklist in 1962 and she had to work hard to do so.

You wrote Faye instead of Lee. I love you

Great actress, tough cookie, bad plastic surgery. But all is forgiven for "Shampoo". (Also wonderful in the very underrated, "Defending Your Life").

I loved the scene in Airport '75 when Brenda Vaccaro punched Lee in the face. Grant's character was a mess, a drunk, and a bitch, but she did lover dead husband (apparently) and tried to leave the plane and join his carcass floating in the ocean.

Gale Sondergaard husband was one of the Hollywood Ten and Gale was blacklisted. Check out her imdb page - she had NO work from 1949 to 1969. Zilch.

Why was Sondergaard treated differently than Lee Grant?

[quote] Funny that she was on the first Susan Harris sitcoms and turned down GG and then her daughter of course was on Empty Nest. Which was a crap show but Dinah Manoff was always very funny - she deserved a better vehicle.

Lee Grant did do a guest spot on Empty Nest where she played Dinah Manoff aunt

R46 If you're allowed to do SOME work than it's not a blacklist, it's a best a GRAY list.

OK, R51, now you have me wanting to fuck him. Thanks, Asshole.

I'm more impressed by the fact that she seems to be traveling alone and carrying her own bags in that airport interview clip. Sketchy face work aside, that's how I want to be when I'm in my 90's.

I think Lee is a ham, but love Dinah and think she should have had a much better career, so because she gave us Dinah, Lee's okay in my book.

R32 I meant R27. Thanks for that!

Lee played some kind of villainess on the Peyton Place tv series.