Polly Bergen, versatile actress, singer dies at 84

Associated Press ^ | September 20, 2014

[Dr. Ursus]

My friend’s nickname is Thunder Road.

[greene66]

Wrong gal. You’re thinking of Candice.

Polly Bergen was the dark-haired actress who was also a panelist on the early “To Tell the Truth” show, in the late-1950s, when it was hosted by Bud Collyer. She was always very fetching, but I’d read about her being a big Planned Parenthood supporter many years ago, and it immediately left her pretty sullied to my eyes.

[jmacusa]

Great scene! And that film is the granddaddy of the noir genre.

[dfwgator]

The scene she did with Robert Mitchum in “Cape fear’’ is one of the most terrorizing things I've ever seen on film. Of course Mitchum just had to stand still in any film he ever did and you knew things were going to go south fast. It's one of the reasons I've only ever watched that version of that movie once.

Funny that she and Mitchum were married to each other in The Winds of War/War and Remembrance.

[hawkeye101]

Polly Bergen was no relation to Edgar Bergen, and she certainly wasn’t Candice Bergen.

[dfwgator]

The gas chamber scene in ‘’The Winds of War’’ IS the most terrifying thing I have ever seen filmed. Good God, I don't know how those actors did it. It is simply horrifying.

Gielgud was amazing in War and Remembrance, in Winds of War, John Houseman played Aaron, but was too frail by then to play him in War and Remembrance. Jane Seymour was great as well, much better than Ali McGraw.

[jmacusa]

Did you see the gas chamber scene? God that was horrifying.

[Brother Cracker]

[jmacusa]

HOT HOT HOT!!!

[jmacusa]

Thanks for the photo btw.

[dfwgator]

Did you see the gas chamber scene? God that was horrifying.

Yes I watched it once, and it made me physically ill. The Wouk novel was also very graphic in describing that scene, and Dan Curtis, the producer, insisted to ABC that he was to have carte blanche in the filming, and they could not edit anything without his permission. For a Made-For-TV series, its' depiction of the Holocaust is unmatched.

[murron]

She was featured in a book back in the 90s about women celebrities who had had abortions. She was one of the actresses, along with Margot Kidder, Anne Archer, and Rita Moreno.

[murron]

See my previous post.

[jmacusa]

Some thirty years ago I worked with a young guy who at that time had been in the Army in the late’70s and spent a year stationed in West Germany. As part of his deployment there he and some of his friends were taken to see Dachau Concentration Camp. He told me that even after over thirty years years you could still smell the stench of burnt flesh. That made a deep impression on him he said. He also said the thing that shook him the most was seeing ‘’fingernail scratch marks on the walls''. To me the sheer and utter terrifying panic of people trying to literally tear their way through a concrete wall is beyond nightmarish. God help the moron who ever says within ear shot of me that the Holocaust didn't happen. I'll be arrested.

[Oatka]

To me the sheer and utter terrifying panic of people trying to literally tear their way through a concrete wall is beyond nightmarish. God help the moron who ever says within ear shot of me that the Holocaust didn't happen. I'll be arrested.

My thinking as well. I remember an Austrian guard interviewed on TV who was at one of those camps recall how, when they opened the doors of the gas chambers, saw a bluish wisp of smoke over a pyramid of bodies. The poor devils scrambled over each other trying to get to fresh air. He took one look and said it was his image of Hell, and refused to work there, even under threat of going to the Russian front.

He said women who were near term aborted and the fetuses were mixed in with the bodies. They had prisoners whose job it was to probe the body cavities of the dead for any gold or other valuables the condemned had hidden in their bodies. You had to wonder at how people could perform such tasks and keep their dignity, let alone their sanity.

[sidebar] I was just a 12-year-old kid in 1945 when the veterans came home. One guy mentioned how, despite the horror of the camps, he could handle it - until he went into a room that had a bin that was full of baby shoes. He went outside and shot dead a couple of German prisoners and said that even after he found they were innocent, being sent there a day or two before the end of the war, he felt no guilt. As far as he was concerned, they should have plowed Germany uder and salted the earth.

[fatima]

Wow,She probably had more than one abortion.I think I remember Ava Gardner having an abortion.She was to star with Clark Gable and aborted Frank Sinatra’s child.That what finally turned him on her.

[jmacusa]

That Austrian guard is lying through his teeth about being sent to the Russian Front if he refused to serve in the camps. First of all he was an SS man and believe it or not there was no punishment of any SS man who didn’t want to be part of the ‘’special action’’ details. There’s a twisted logic to this. Those involved in such horrifying work who would have any moral reservation about committing such acts might be likely to talk about it and that’s not what the SS wanted. Truth is, if you research it no more than four or five SS were ever present during the selection and gassing process. So confident were they(the SS) that their victims were trapped with no way to escape they didn’t need more SS men on hand. Again, the fewer who actually saw the crime committed the less witnesses to talk about it.

[pallmallman]

Yes,...Thank you! James Stewart is right up there with the best!!

[Travis McGee]

Twice, and a critical and box office success twice. Both Cape Fears.

[mosesdapoet]

Yea, you’re right. I know as I started thinking about it as soon as I posted that. I was saying to myself Bergen’s kid was a year older than I? See what happens when you get old ? You never make mistakes when your young.