Happy 90th Claire Bloom!

Is she a Dame or isn't she? I couldn't figure it out.

As a kid in the late 60s/early 70s some of her films were on television all the time: The Chapman Report (62), The Haunting (63), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (65), Charly (68), The Illustrated Man (69). Quite a career! Glad to see she's still alive.

R1, she is a CBE, not a DBE or GBE, so no she isn't a Dame.

Cast against type as the alcoholic nymphomaniac in George Cukor's melodrama, "The Chapman Report."

^^ He asked her to play that part without a bra. She said this direction helped find the physicality of the character.

She was married to Rod Steiger, yes? I confuse her with Claire Trevor for no reason but they share a first name.

I saw her play Clytemnestra in Sophocles’ “Electra” on Broadway with Zoe Wanamaker, Michael Cumpsty, and the glorious Pat Carroll. Her role was comparatively brief, but she was glorious.

I read her memoir about her relationship with Philip Roth. She wrote that he was a darling but turned into a monster after they married. She really made him out to be a psychopath but he wrote some great work after their divorce. This is the only memoir I’ve read that includes Roth so I don’t know if her story has been verified.

I'm surprised she hasn't been made a Dame. We've recently discussed Dames Penelope Keith and Barbara Windsor, and Claire Bloom has had a much more substantial acting career than either of them. I know someone said Windsor's was more for her charity work, though.

Claire Bloom starred with (at the time) Dina Merrill's husband, Cliff Robertson, in his Academy Award-winning performance in the 1968 movie, "Charly."

Charly

She was an un-fucking-believably good Orlena Grimaldi on As the World Turns.

Didn't she kill somebody or was that the other one?

Sexy psychic lezbo in The Haunting! Well dressed too, thank you Mary Quant! GodDAMN, that movie is scurrey...ooof

She's had an interesting life.

The Claire Bloom-Phillip Roth feud would make a good series of FEUD.

Lady Marchmain was not "Callously wicked" or "wantonly cruel". She was just a good Catholic.

[quote] She was an un-fucking-believably good Orlena Grimaldi on As the World Turns.

I didn't realize she had been on a US soap.

I served her once, She had scrambled eggs and toast. After she paid the check and was leaving I said "Miss Bloom?" And she smiled and said yes. It was cool.

Isn't her daughter with Steiger, the Opera singer, a homosexualist?

Philip Roth wreaked big revenge on her in his book I MARRIED A COMMUNIST. Who knows where the truth lies, but I can't think of Claire Bloom any more without referencing the monstrous Eve Frame (and her horrid daughter) in Roth's book.

R20 Unfortunately she inherited her father physique.

R21 I tried to read that piece of fiction but it was so dripping with BILE that I began to distrust everything. I desisted after 60 pages.

[quote] It was cool.

R19 I suspect her critics would suggest that her complete persona was cool. She was as cold and cerebral to the point of frigidity.

The BBC for some unknown reason asked her to play Karenina. She is as cold as Siberia. The production is as cheap as a railway waiting room and it isn't a patch on the brilliantly-photographed production starring Vivien and Ralph Richardson.

Her Karenina is paired with Albert Lieven (whose career relied on submissive Nazis) and Sean Connery (who, prior to grooming and trimmed eyebrows, had such deep dimples in his cheeks that he looks like a pantomime doll).

"Charles. Is this true?", "Callously wicked and wantonly crewell," "I don't think I can go on anymore."

"It's voodoo. You can see her tootmarks on the necks of her victims." - essence of what a certain A. Blanche had to say about Teresa Marchmain

Roth couldn't stand Woody Allen, and after Allen and Mia Farrow split, he briefly dated Farrow and they remained friends. In Roth's novel "The Humbling," the protagonist meets a woman who has caught her husband sexually abusing her young daughter; and, supposedly, "Deconstructing Harry" was Allen's unflattering depiction of Roth. Bloom had small, not very memorable, roles in a couple of Allen's movies.

The two Bloom movies I most remember are "The Clash Of The Titans", and "The Haunting", both of which I love. I always forget she was in "Crimes And Misdemeanors" & "Mighty Aphrodite". I really do need to seek out her other films. Thanks for the reminder, OP!

[quote] The two Bloom movies I most remember are "The Clash Of The Titans", and "The Haunting

She's appeared in LOTS more important movies than those two.

She's appeared with the best; Chaplin, Olivier, Burton, Mason, Newman, and Hopkins as well as Steiger, Brynner and De Mille in 125 movies over 74 years.

^ Add Connery to that list!

She lost her virginity to Richard Burton, and they had an on-off affair over many years. Until one day:

She found him locked in 'a fervent embrace' with the American actress Susan Strasberg, seven years her junior, who bore a striking resemblance to Bloom. Claire paused only long enough to yell 'F*** off, the pair of you!' before slamming the door.

No love for Bloom in Sammy and Rosie Get Laid?

Just messing with you.

In addition to using his rage against Bloom in fiction, Roth also wrote a no-holds-barred non-fiction response to Bloom's memoir. He showed it to friends who thought it so extreme that it would be advisable not to publish. So of course we can only wonder if this ferocious testament might ever see the light of day, in due course.

[quote] no-holds-barred

I bet there were some no-holds-barred battles in this marriage.

(He was almost slim back in those days)

I'm glad that Claire Bloom's Lady Marchmain won't be supplanted by this totally unnecessary remake.

Thank you, R26. I'll try to take in at least one of the other films over the weekend. I often play things in the background while I sketch & sculpt.

Claire and the mouth-watering young Chad Everett

and hungry

R21 Roth was a jealous freak. He could not handle any competition from anyone. Typical sick, self important asshole writer. I wouldn't buy a word he said.

R35 Alan Cohen aka 'Corey Allen' was hot and he went to the right synagogue!

I would love to watch her whole storyline on ATWT over again.

Why has she refused to accept a damehood?

Unlike Dame Irene Worth, she deigned to appear in crummy TV soap like Midsummer Murders.

She was especially beautiful in Look Back In Anger.

She had terrible taste in men.

She married Roth because she liked the image of "the famous writer" as her husband.

She goes for "dangerous men" to counteract her virginal stereotype.

Either that, or she's got some mysterious Ashkenazy self-hatred obsession.

the rarely screened The Chapman Report (1962) is being shown on TCM on August 18

Pre-caftan Shelley warming up the pearls.