Incarcerated activists from Oscar-nominated documentary The Alabama Solution sent to solitary

Transfer of subjects of acclaimed film about inhumane prison conditions described as ‘straight-up retaliation’ The Alabama prison system has moved three well-known incarcerated activists who supported a 2022 prison strike and were featured in an Oscar-nominated documentary about the troubled system to isolated cells with little contact with others, family members and attorneys said. Family members of the three men said they fear for their loved ones’ safety and are concerned the moves to solitary confinement are a form of retaliation for outspokenness about problems within the prison system. Robert Earl Council, Melvin Ray and Raoul Poole were transferred two weeks ago from their existing prisons to solitary confinement at the Kilby correctional facility outside Montgomery, their lawyers said. The transfers come as some groups have encouraged a new prison labor strike this year. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/nNPmeAV via IFTTT

‘I lied to get the part’: Melvyn Hayes on his ‘angry young man’ beginnings – and It Ain’t Half Hot Mum

He was tipped to be the next Richard Burton – but ended up as crossdressing Gunner Gloria in the now controversial sitcom. As his breakthrough classic returns to the screen, Hayes looks back

One day in 1957, Melvyn Hayes was on the set of a film called Woman in a Dressing Gown when a man sat down next to him. “I was getting paid £5 a day and I’d been on location for three days,” the actor recalls. “All I had to do was walk up to a house and put a newspaper through a letterbox. That was my part. Finished. I said to this bloke, ‘I can’t believe the waste of money on this film. Take me. You could have got a newspaper boy on £1 a day to do what I’m doing.’ Then I said, ‘What do you do then, you lazy bugger?’ And he said, ‘I’m the producer.’”

Hayes, now 89, giggles at the memory of the cheek of himself at 23. Back then, £5 a day was a decent whack. His first job in showbiz, in the early 1950s, was as assistant to The Great Masoni, a magician who tasked Hayes with “disappearing twice daily for £4”. His chief film role so far had been in the 1955 drama documentary The Unloved, in which he played a boy in a home for delinquent kids.

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