The Hollywoodland Revue

Long before Hollywood knew how to honor its legends, Madame Sul-Te-Wan made history by becoming the first African American actor to sign a motion picture contract—and then the first black actor to become a featured player at the very beginning of the industry. Born Nellie Crawford in Louisville, Kentucky on March 7, 1873, Sul-Te-Wan grew up in a nation still stumbling under Reconstruction and hard-set systems of segregation. By the time she moved to Los Angeles in 1913, moving pictures were barely an industry—and possibilities for women of color didn't really exist. But Sul-Te-Wan would work for over forty years, ranking among the most frequently employed African American actresses of her silent and early sound eras.

The Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson Sr. was born October 8, 1941, in Greenville, S.C. The architecture of his youth was segregation; the agony and promise of America raced through his young blood. Raised by his mother Helen Burns and later adopted by his stepfather, Charles Henry Jackson, young Jesse knew at an early age that dignity was something Americans had to earn and often barter for.

Before the Academy Award became that locked down, tracked and sacred cultural trophy, it was just a thing. Honorific. Symbolic. Sometimes achingly fragile. Perhaps no lost Oscar underscores this better than Hattie McDaniel's Missing Oscar. Gone With the Wind's Oscar plaque vanished without a trace. It was not the iconic golden statuette we know and love now, but the precursor plaques awarded to supporting actors (and actresses) during that period in time. It was history being made...and then it went mysteriously missing.

Robert Selden Duvall, the versatile American actor who charmed and captivated audiences with his sensitivity and intensity, died on February 15, 2026, at the age of 95. Duvall's six-decade career included memorable performances in films that ranged from Gregory Peck's faithful sidekick Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird to leading roles like the Oscar-winning country preacher in Tender Mercies, and as the gravel voiced consigliere Tom Hagen in The Godfather films.

In the vast machinery of early Hollywood, where fame was fleeting and anonymity was the rule rather than the exception, Louis “Dad” Troester occupied a quiet but beloved corner of the film colony. Born August 7, 1856, in Bohemia, Troester came to motion pictures late in life, carrying with him the physical poetry of age—long white hair, a flowing beard, and the gentle authority of a man who looked as though he had lived many winters. It was an appearance that endeared him to audiences and children alike, and one that would ultimately define both his livelihood and his fate.

Some movies wow you with their technical prowess. Others sneak up on you and remake you: subdued works of art that know there’s something that can’t be said but won’t let you forget it either. Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value is one of the latter. An exquisitely felt and fluidly beautiful family drama, the film explores the reverberations of emotional trauma across generations, how psychic pain is inherited and reformatted, beautified, and—occasionally—weaponized. The result is a moving, powerful film that doubles down on both sentiment and beauty.

Los Angeles in 1948 was selling dreams by the square foot. The war was over. Veterans were home. Hillsides were being carved into subdivisions. Real estate advertisements offered sunshine and citrus trees. Buy a house and you could look out toward tomorrow. If you had a decent job and a little bit of moxie, you could own a piece of the future. Gladys Eugenia Kern believed in the future.

If Hollywood has always sold itself as sunshine and reinvention, Scott Michaels has made a career out of documenting the shadows—the places where glamour curdled into scandal, where a final address replaced a marquee name, and where the city’s relentless appetite for myth often obscured what actually happened. Part historian, part storyteller, part showman with a librarian’s instinct for details, Michaels is best known as the founder and guiding voice of Dearly Departed Tours, the long-running Los Angeles excursion that treats “tragic history” not as cheap shock, but as a strange, revealing map of how fame and mortality intersect in this town.

Hollywood’s theaters serve up a rich and varied slate this weekend, from a boldly reimagined literary classic to animated family fun and star-studded crime thrillers. Whether you’re planning a Valentine’s outing, a solo night at the cinema, or a genre chase through horror and sci-fi, there’s plenty to choose from as new films arrive nationwide on Friday, Feb. 13.

Actor Bud Cort, whose tousled good looks and un-self-conscious style made him one of the most recognizable faces of 1970s films died on February 11, in Connecticut. He was seventy-seven. Cort died after a lengthy illness. His career showcased his talents on stage and screen, highlighting his career-long transformation from child actor to one of America's most interesting character actors.

James Van Der Beek, the actor who became a defining face of late-1990s television as Dawson Leery on Dawson’s Creek and later reinvented his public image through sharp, self-mocking comedy and steady character work, has died at 48 following a journey with colorectal cancer, according to an announcement by his wife, Kimberly. Born James David Van Der Beek on March 8, 1977, in Cheshire, Connecticut, he gravitated toward performance early, eventually landing the lead role in Dawson’s Creek—a breakthrough that helped define The WB’s era of teen drama and made him, almost overnight, a pop-cultural reference point for a generation.

Long before Hollywood acknowledged Black filmmakers as artists, Oscar Micheaux had already written, financed, produced, directed, and distributed more feature films than nearly any of his white contemporaries. Working outside the studio system—and often in open defiance of it—Micheaux became the most prolific and influential African American filmmaker of the early twentieth century, a fierce individualist whose work laid the foundation for what would later be called independent Black cinema.