Sedona News – “Grease” director Randal Kleiser returns to this year’s Sedona International Film Festival with his good friend, actress Diane Baker for “An Afternoon with Diane Baker” on Thursday, Feb. 27 at 1 p.m. at the Sedona Performing Arts Center.
Diane Baker will be honored with the festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award for her distinguished career as an actress and her commitment to the art of filmmaking.
Kleiser and Baker will discuss her half-century career with clips from such films as “Diary of Anne Frank”, “Marnie”, and “Silence of the Lambs”, plus anecdotes about working with Joan Crawford, Alfred Hitchcock, Maxmillian Schell, Anthony Hopkins, Melvyn Douglas and more.
Baker’s distinguished career as an actress and producer of film and television spans over 50 years. First cast in director George Stevens Sr.’s film “The Diary of Anne Frank” (1959), her career quickly took off at Twentieth Century-Fox where her credits include “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (1959), “The Best of Everything” (1959), “Tess of the Storm Country” (1960), “Nine Hours to Rama” (1963) and “Stolen Hours” with Susan Hayward (1963).
In the subsequent years, Baker worked across the major studios and with Hollywood’s biggest names, starring in “The Prize” (1963) with Paul Newman, “Strait Jacket”, (1964) with Joan Crawford, “Marnie” (1964) with Sean Connery for Alfred Hitchcock and “Mirage” (1965) with Gregory Peck.
Baker returned to the screen in the ’90s with contemporary classics like “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991), “The Joy Luck Club” (1993), “The Net” with Sandra Bullock, “Murder at 1600” with Alan Alda.
Baker expanded her career as producer, creating several award-winning documentaries, including “To Climb a Mountain” HBO, Emmy-nominated “Miracles in the Making” and TV films including “Portrait of Grandpa Doc” ABC (1977), starring Melvyn Douglas, Barbara Rush, Bruce Davison, Anne Seymour, directed by Randal Kleiser.
She is the recipient of numerous lifetime honors and awards, several Emmy nominations including “Inherit the Wind” starring Melvyn Douglas & Ed Begley.
Baker is co-producing a six-part series with her partner, commercial/documentary filmmaker, Dennis Powers on the History of Illustration for American television. Diane is creating a two-year post-graduate film/acting non-profit program Global Film Connect — The Robert Osborne Center for Film History, to give auditioning students an opportunity to work with professionals in an “Industry setting” to learn to produce small meaningful films and continue the Legacy of TCM’s Robert Osborne, with whom she enjoyed a lifelong friendship.
“An Afternoon with Diane Baker” — hosted by Randal Kleiser — will take the stage at the Sedona Performing Arts Center on Thursday, Feb. 27 at 1 p.m. Tickets are $18 General Admission or $15 for Sedona Film Festival Members.
For tickets and more information, please call 928-282-1177. Both the theatre and film festival office are located at 2030 W. Hwy. 89A, in West Sedona. For more information, visit: www.SedonaFilmFestival.org.
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