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Marian Waldman. Actress: Black Christmas. Canadian character actress Marian Waldman was born on December 16, 1924 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The daughter of a professor mother, Dora Cooperstock, and a physician father, Louis Waldman, she was of Ashkenazi Jewish descent.
- January 1, 1
- Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- January 1, 1
- Toronto, Canada
Actress: Black Christmas. Canadian character actress Marian Waldman was born on December 16, 1924 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The daughter of a professor mother, Dora Cooperstock, and a physician father, Louis Waldman, she was of Ashkenazi Jewish descent.
- December 16, 1924
- July 5, 1985
She was born Marian Ann Waldman to Ashkenazi Jews in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on December 16, 1924. She was primarily a choir girl and a veteran stage actress in numerous stage productions for over thirty years before turning to films and television.
Marian Waldman was a Canadian actress, best known for her memorable role in Black Christmas (1974). She played foul-mouthed drunken housemother Mrs. MacHenry.
- Black Christmas Went Through Several Script Evolutions.
- A Psychic Convinced Olivia Hussey to Star in The Movie.
- Bette Davis Was Asked to Play The House Mother.
- Gilda Radner Was Supposed to co-star.
- One Actor Was Fired For A Tragic reason.
- A Lot of The Snow Wasn’T Real.
- One Cameraman Played The Killer.
- There Is A Backstory For The Killer.
- Several Crew Members Made Cameos.
- It Was A Hit in Canada, But Bombed in America—At first.
Black Christmas began life as a screenplay by Roy Moore called The Babysitter, which riffed on the now-familiar urban legend of a babysitter tormented by a killer who turns out to be making phone calls from inside the house. That concept was tweaked by writer Timothy Bond to include a collegiate setting, and eventually made its way to director Bob ...
Clark wanted to make Black Christmas as sophisticated as he possibly could, and pursued top-tier talent to elevate his script. To that end, he reached out to Olivia Hussey, then best known for her work on Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, to play the role of “final girl” Jess Bradford. Hussey took the part, and when she showed up on set, she ap...
The sorority’s house mother, Mrs. MacHenry or Mrs. Mac, was loosely based on one of Clark’s aunts, who also had a habit of hiding liquor bottles throughout the house. The role is vividly played by veteran actress Marian Waldman, but Clark originally had a bigger named in mind. The role was offeredto screen legend Bette Davis, but she ultimately tur...
Black Christmas’s cast is a mix of already established stars (Hussey and 2001: A Space Odyssey’s Keir Dullea among them) and future stars (Margot Kidder, for example, had not yet starred in Superman), and that’s also reflected in the people who were almost in the cast. One future star who was cast but ultimately had to leave the film was Gilda Radn...
For the role of police Lt. Kenneth Fuller, Clark originally wanted Oscar-winning actor Edmond O’Brien, who agreed to do the film. When O’Brien arrived in Toronto to begin work, though, Clark and Arbeid noticed something was wrong. According to Arbeid, O’Brien had trouble remembering where he was, and once declared that he was going to go back up to...
Though the film was shot in Toronto during the winter, Black Christmasdealt with an interesting problem when it came time to set the wintry scenes: a lack of snow. What little snow the production did have was closely guarded by the film’s art director Karen Bromley, who recalled going to the house where much of the film was shot very early in the m...
The film is also recognizable for its continuous use of point of view shots to establish the movements of the killer throughout the film. All of those shots, including every time we see the killer’s hands, were performed by cameraman Bert Dunk, who developed a “body brace” rig that would allow him to mount the camera on his shoulder while keeping h...
Clark was determined to keep the killer’s identity mysterious throughout Black Christmas, so other than the names Billy and Agnes we know very little about who he is or why he kills. That doesn’t mean no information exists, though. According to Clark, he developed a “very strong” backstory for Billy that provides a subtle logic to the phone calls. ...
Because Black Christmaswas produced on a low budget, Clark cut costs and saved time wherever he could, which meant various crew members ended up playing small roles throughout the film. Arbeid, for example, appears in the film as the taxi driver at the door of the sorority house. Among the other cameos: Property master John “Frenchie” Berger appear...
Black Christmas was released in the fall of 1974 in its home country of Canada, and creative marketing (including a series of macabre countdown ads released in newspapers) helped make it a box office success. Warner Bros. picked up the film for distribution in the United States, and though the response to preview screenings was positive, the studio...
Marian Waldman. Actress: Black Christmas. Canadian character actress Marian Waldman was born on December 16, 1924 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The daughter of a professor mother, Dora Cooperstock, and a physician father, Louis Waldman, she was of Ashkenazi Jewish descent.
Dec 16, 2019 · Born on this day in 1924: Marian Waldman Character actress Waldman was best known for her role in 1974’s Black Christmas . She played foul-mouthed drunken housemother Mrs. MacHenry.
