Barbara Loden

Born: 1932-07-08

Barbara Loden (July 8, 1932 – September 5, 1980) was a Broadway Tony award-winning American stage and film actress, model, and stage/film director. She was the first woman to write, direct and star in her own feature film, Wanda, which won the International Critics Award at the 1970 Venice Film Festival. Loden also directed several off-Broadway plays. Loden was a life member of the famed Actors Studio and appeared in several projects directed by her second husband, Elia Kazan, including Splendor in the Grass. In 1970 Loden wrote, produced, directed, and starred in her own independent film, Wanda, made with the collaboration of cinematographer and editor Nicholas T. Proferes, on a meager budget of $115,000. Wanda is an semi-autobiographical portrait of a "passive, disconnected coal miner's wife who attaches herself to a petty crook."[4] Innovative in its cinéma vérité style, it was one of the few American films directed by a woman to be theatrically released at that time. Film critic David Thomson wrote, "Wanda is full of unexpected moments and raw atmosphere, never settling for cliché in situation or character." The film was the only American film accepted to, and which won, the International Critics' Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1970, and was presented at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival. In 2010, with support from Gucci, the film was restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive and screened at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.


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Splendor in the Grass

as Ginny Stamper
Released: 1961-10-10

A fragile Kansas girl's unrequited and forbidden love for a handsome young man from the town's...

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Wild River

as Betty Jackson
Released: 1960-05-26

A young bureaucrat for the Tennessee Valley Authority goes to rural Tennessee to oversee the...

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Wanda

as Wanda Goronski
Released: 1970-09-01

After a string of abusive relationships, Wanda abandons her family and seeks solace in the...

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Arthur Miller: Writer

as Self (archive footage)
Released: 2017-12-08

One of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century, Arthur Miller created such celebrated works...

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Fade-In

as Jean
Released: 1973-11-08

A sophisticated Hollywood film editor, on location for a film she is working on, falls for a...

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The Glass Menagerie

as Laura Wingfield
Released: 1966-12-08

An adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play about a restless young warehouse worker and would-be...

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The Frontier Experience

as Delilah Fowler
Released: 1975-01-01

The Westward movement — and a woman's perspective of that movement — emerges in the dramatic...

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I Am Wanda

as Self
Released: 1980-12-01

Documentary about American film director and actress Barbara Loden featuring an interview filmed...

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The Dick Cavett Show

as Self - Guest
First aired: 1968-06-06

The Dick Cavett Show has been the title of several talk shows hosted by Dick Cavett on various...

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Naked City

as Penny Sonners
First aired: 1958-09-30

Naked City is a police drama series which aired from 1958 to 1963 on the ABC television network....

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