On the Passing of Robert Osborne
Lovers of old movies are poignantly aware simultaneously of the immortality and fragility of both the images and the people who make them. So we feel a tug, knowing this might be our last chance to see this person or that, and yet after they pass away there they are,...
A Viewer’s Guide: How to Watch Grand Hotel (1932)
"Grand Hotel...always the same. People come, people go. Nothing ever happens."Grand Hotel took home the Best Picture Oscar for MGM in 1933, beating another MGM release, The Champ, as well as Samuel Goldwyn's Arrowsmith, Fox's Bad Girl, First National's Five Star...
Disembodied: Waldo Lydecker, the Voice in the Dark in Laura (1944)
"McPherson, if you know anything about faces, look at mine. How singularly innocent I look this morning. Have you ever seen such candid eyes?" "Laura considered me the wisest, the wittiest, the most interesting man she'd ever met. I was in complete accord with...
In Their Own Words: Joseph Cotten on Tallulah, The Third Man, Citizen Kane, and his friendship with Orson Welles
Joseph Cotten, who was born May 15, 1905, appeared in some of the best films of the 1940s, including Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Shadow of a Doubt, Gaslight, Portrait of Jennie, Lydia, and The Third Man. In 1982 he wrote a memoir, Vanity Will Get You...
TCMFF 2016: Recap of Saturday, Day 3: Vitaphone, Reiner, Gould, Karina
From my comfortable perch back at my friend's house in North Hollywood, the intensity, mad dashes, glorious experiences, and occasional frustrations of TCMFF 2016 seem rather remote, Gentle Reader, but at this time a little over one week ago I was watching Dead Men...
Anatomy of a scorcher: Mary Astor on Filming the Steamy Kiss in Red Dust
Mary Astor's memoir A Life on Film is fantastic—she's a wonderful writer, and her sharp observations on the industry and what went on behind the cameras are fascinating and incredibly useful to anyone who writes about classic film.Astor writes of being asked by a bank...
31 Days of Oscar: The Stanwyck Snub
Oscar snubs has got to be one of the juiciest of blogathon topics—we're all so passionate about it. Myself included...At the moment, working on this post, I am mad enough to spit that Barbara Stanwyck, who might be my very favorite actress of all time (if I actually...
Elizabeth Taylor’s Best Actress Oscars: BUtterfield 8 (1960) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
Elizabeth Taylor won two Best Actress Oscars, for BUtterfield 8 (1960) and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). The first she perhaps rightly dismissed as a pity vote. The second she won fair and square, and I hope it meant something to her. Until fairly recently I...
A Viewer’s Guide: How to Watch the Cinematic Collaboration of Humphrey Bogart and John Huston
John Huston and Humphrey Bogart made six movies together, six points of intersection over their long careers. Three of the six were crucial in the careers of both men: The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), and The African Queen (1951)....
A Viewer’s Guide: How to Watch The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is a total kinkfest, and if you're new to it, you can use a little help learning the ropes. I'll be happy to show you around. Time Out's synopsis is as concise and elegant as could be, so here it is: "Superb performance by...
A Viewer’s Guide: How to Watch The Gang’s All Here (1943)
Fasten your seat belts. The Gang's All Here is too much. It's the thrill ride of Hollywood musicals. If you've not seen it but have seen other Busby Berkeley movies you're thinking, Yeah, got it. But all the fabulous excesses of Berkeley in black-and-white pale in...
In Her Own Words: Maureen O’Hara (1920-2015)
TCM is honoring Maureen O'Hara (1920-2015) with a 24-hour tribute starting at 6am ET on Friday, November 20. I thought some commentary from herself discussing her experiences shooting several of the movies in the TCM lineup would be add dimension to this day of...
Dickie Moore (1925-2015), Lost and Found
Where all parents are strong and wise and capable, and all children are happy and beloved... —H.I., Raising Arizona https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHbExzVqYZM It's an intense little face. The Cupid's Bow mouth and tiny, turned-up nose sit beneath large, dark,...
I Know Where I’m Going (1945)
I Know Where I'm Going (1945) gets under people's skins. It's not exactly a GWTW- or Star Wars-type blockbuster. But some of its fans are so passionate that they follow its heroine’s path to the western isles of Scotland to visit the sites they know so well from the...
A Dickie Moore Primer (1925-2015)
TCM's tribute to Dickie Moore starts this morning at 6:15 a.m. Dickie Moore was one of those very rare people you can watch grow up onscreen, starting when he was 11 months old. That's when he made his screen debut, playing John Barrymore as a baby in Beloved Rogue...
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)
"Where have you been all my life?" That's how I feel when I see a movie for the first time and fall totally in love with it. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir was a movie I had certainly heard of, but I knew the title from the Hope Lange TV series of the same name in the...
The Lusty Men (1952): Robert Mitchum is the Sweetheart of the Rodeo
Summer Under the Stars presents Nicholas Ray's The Lusty Men, part of TCM's 24-hour tribute to Robert Mitchum "There never was a bull that couldn't be rode, there never was a cowboy who couldn't be throwed.... You eat a little dirt if you have to." —Jeff McCloud...
The More the Merrier (1943): Kissin’ on the Stoop
I Like a Man That Takes His Time "You look like a high-type, clean-cut, nice young fellow." What's really hard with a movie this delightful is to write just about one scene, even a scene this great. A brief digression: I'm posting this an hour before leaving for...
Desk Set (1957): Sapiosexuals Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy Find Love in the Library
The opening: The Mondrian carpet, the computer, clattering typewriter... the sprightly, lighthearted music tell us that it's a comedy. Here is how I first saw Desk Set: At about 2:30am after working a double shift, one at Forbes and another at Newsweek, I got home,...
Strangers in a Strange Land Pt II: Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express (1932) and The Scarlet Empress (1934)
Part II Deceit, Desire, and Survival: Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg's Shanghai Express (1932) and The Scarlet Empress (1934) A missionary wins the heart of a poetic warlord, a woman of mystery wins back her untrusting lover, and a promiscuous princess wins...
Strangers in a Strange Land: The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932), Shanghai Express (1932), and The Scarlet Empress (1934)
Here are three pre-Code films about women from the West who find themselves in dangerous situations in exotic lands (China in two, Russia in the other). The women are thrown upon their own resources, their ability to adapt and survive, with little or no support or...
The Trouble with Stella Dallas
This post is part of the Contrary to Popular Opinion Blogathon, where we set the consensus on its head by defending a maligned film, performer or director or toppling a beloved one! Stella Dallas is still much beloved 78 years after it was made, and a favorite to many...
There’s Always Tomorrow (1956)
There's Always Tomorrow starring Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, and Joan Bennett. Generally I'm down with Jeanine Basinger's definition of a woman's picture as one that centers on a woman and her experience, and this excellent film asks the question, Is it still a...
The Clock (1945)
The Clock (Vincente Minnelli), starring Judy Garland and Robert Walker, with scenes in the Central Park Zoo, Penn Station, The Astor Hotel, and atop a double-decker bus, a slightly surreal but benign after-hours interval in which Garland and Walker finish injured...
Barbara Stanwyck: Babs in the Boardroom
In 1948 Barbara Stanwyck’s screen debut was 21 years behind her. In those two decades she had navigated through two hugely successful incarnations: the first as the fresh-faced but wised-up pre-Code ingénue princess of prisons, speakeasies, and lurid melodramas (with...