Showing results by author "Michael B. Druxman" in All Categories

Returning to his boyhood in Seattle, Michael explores with greater depth his journey to Los Angeles where, without any show business contacts whatsoever, he was able to create a successful career for himself as a publicist, playwright, screenwriter, director, and Hollywood historian. From Rock Hudson and Christopher Lee to George Raft and Frank Sinatra; from playwright Tennessee Williams and legendary producer Roger Corman, the work is filled with amusing stories of his encounters and the lessons he learned from Hollywood's rich and famous.

Sixteen years have passed, and Jay Barnett returns to the resort town of Mineral Lake with his five-year-old son only to find open hostility, anti-Semitism, and terror. Inspired by true events.

During their prime in the 1940s and early 1950s, Abbott and Costello were the most popular comedy duo in show business. They first became a team in burlesque, graduated to radio with Kate Smith, then Broadway with comedian Bobby Clark and Carmen Miranda; and, ultimately, to the movies, making their debut supporting Allan Jones and Nancy Kelly in One Night in the Tropics (1940).

When you think of Jason Robards, you also think of Eugene O’Neill and the tragic, hard-drinking characters he created in The Iceman Cometh, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Hughie and The Moon for the Misbegotten. Robards, the son of a failed actor, Jason Robards Sr., discovered O’Neill’s plays when he was in the Navy during WW2. After the war, without his father’s encouragement, he pursued his own acting career, but it was 11 years and two failed marriages before he finally achieved success.

Dick Powell made a career of reinventing himself. Born in Arkansas, the young tenor played horn and banjo, and sang with various dance bands and orchestras in Pittsburgh and elsewhere before he was brought to Hollywood, where he sang opposite Ruby Keeler and others in such classic Busby Berkeley musicals as 42nd Street, Footlight Parade, Gold Diggers of 1935, and the Al Jolson film, Wonder Bar.

Clifton Webb was one of those rare motion picture actors who became a major box-office star when he was in his mid-50s. Indeed, his first sound movie was Laura (1944), and his role as Waldo Lydecker in that classic film noir earned him the first of three Oscar nominations. Four years later, Clifton Webb became a household name when he played Lynn Belvedere and poured a bowl of mush onto a baby's head in Sitting Pretty.

Ida Lupino was a trail-blazer. Not only was she one of the most vibrant Hollywood actresses of the 1940s and 1950s, but she was also only the second woman to become a member of the Director's Guild. Michael B. Druxman's one-woman play, Ida: The Last Lupino, joins Ida in 1983 when she is living alone in her decaying Brentwood home as a virtual hermit, lamenting the break-up of her marriage with Howard Duff. Ida: The Last Lupino is a vivid, often witty, portrait of a woman who conquered a man's world.

Following an earthquake,, tourists have begun to disappear in the Lorenzo Caverns. The FBI claims that a bear is the culprit, but the local sheriff and an esteemed archaeologist suspect that the missing people have become the victims of a bloodthirsty alien creature.

Michael B. Druxman’s Rathbone joins the actor near the end of his life while, because of his troubled financial condition, he is working on still another less than memorable film. The play delves into Rathbone’s dark side, exploring his relationships with his first wife, the son he virtually abandoned, and Ouida, the divisive woman to whom he was married for over 40 years, yet perhaps never really knew.

For nearly 30 years, Clark Gable was "the King" of Hollywood. Female fans swooned, and male admirers were made envious of his unaffected masculinity. Through jaunty, self-assured performances in films like It Happened One Night, San Francisco, Mutiny on the Bounty, and Gone with the Wind, he carved a niche for himself as the quintessential American movie star.

He's been called "the best film actor Hollywood has ever known". His marvelous performances in classic movies like Captains Courageous, Adam's Rib, Bad Day at Black Rock, and Inherit the Wind endowed him with a tough, solid humorous image - one that was totally at odds with his own personality. The play opens in 1967 when Tracy was in poor health and struggling to complete what would be his final film, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.

Jackie Moss was once one of the hottest stand-up comedians in show business, a contemporary of Don Rickles, Jack Carter, and Buddy Hackett. He'd even had his own television series. But Jackie has a temper and that temper has put his career in trouble. Fired from his most recent Las Vegas engagement and with his personal manager threatening to terminate their relationship, Jackie has only one gig left on his schedule: a well-paying one-night performance at a private party deep in the Ozark Mountains.

In Michael B. Druxman's outrageous comedy, Hail on the Chief!, cantankerous gentleman rancher Oliver Pettridge hates his neighbor, a former cowboy movie star. He's hated him for years over a property line dispute. As the play begins, the neighbor has just been elected President of the United States.

While running from the law in Dallas, small time hustler Charlie Powers is hit by a car and "dies". He has an out-of-body experience, in which he witnesses a gangland slaying that took place 17 years earlier. And, he recognizes the killer as a man who is currently running for political office in California. Brought back to life by paramedics, the roguish Powers decides to pursue an investigation for his own personal gain. Unfortunately, he gives himself away to the candidate, and now the pursuer becomes the pursued.

Orson Welles is a one-person play in two acts about the life and times of Orson Welles. Some say that Orson Welles was a genius, but he always denied that. He did give us Citizen Kane, considered by most critics to be the best film ever made, but after that, his career took one long downward plunge. The play finds Welles trying to find the financing for one of his film projects. It's a difficult task, since most of the Hollywood community considers him to be a "screwball".