Humoresque (1946): Crawford and the Sea of Love
Thrilled to be writing this for the 2023 CMBA fall blogathon, because Humoresque is a classic Second Sight movie where the riches it offers mostly get eclipsed. In this case it's by Crawford's dazzling diva turn, which sweeps all before it. Hoping to stir you to see...
Writer at Work: Mary Astor
Mary Astor is almost one-stop shopping for a classic film buff. She started working in her teens and was the sole support of her greedy, abusive parents, whom she eventually had to sue for her independence, so she checks that box (see Jackie Coogan, Baby Peggy, Dickie...
Giant (1956): Can This Marriage Be Saved?
Oh boy, I get to write about Giant! Or rather the marriage therein, between Texan Bick Benedict (Rock Hudson), rich, powerful, and beautiful scion of a 595,000 acre ranch, and Leslie Lynnton (Elizabeth Taylor), daughter of an old money Maryland family. Giant spans 25...
Raw Deal (1948): Crashing Out of Corkscrew Alley
"I believe in the nobility of the human spirit. It is that for which I look in a subject I am to direct. I do not believe that everybody is bad, that the whole world is wrong. The greatness of Shakespeare's plays is the nobility of the human spirit, even though he may...
All Twisted Up Inside: Arthur Kennedy and Frank Sinatra in Some Came Running (1958)
This is about Kennedy's performance in Some Came Running (1958), directed by Vincente Minnelli. Kennedy scored his fourth Best Supporting Actor nomination for his portrayal of Frank Hirsh, the embodiment of small-town small-mindedness and hypocrisy. I am...
Love Letters: Dear Thomas Mitchell
"I didn't know I was that good" ?what you said upon accepting your Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Stagecoach (1939) Dear Tom, or Dear Kid Dabb (Only Angels Have Wings, 1939) ...Diz Moore (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 1939) ...Doc Boone (Stagecoach, 1939) ...Clopin...
Sex, Shoes, Brows and Gowns: Now, Voyager (1942)
"My mother didn't think Leslie was suitable for a Vale of Boston. What man is suitable, Doctor, she's never found one.... What man would ever look at me and say 'I want you'? I'm fat. My mother doesn't approve of dieting. Look at my shoes. My mother approves of...
Marsha Hunt: Living Well Is the Best Revenge
Last month, in October of 2017, Marsha Hunt began her 101st transit around the sun. She continues to grace our increasingly graceless planet, and while we were always lucky to have her, she seems even more precious now, when we are really in the soup. Miss Hunt is...
In Their Own Words: Joseph Cotten on Tallulah, The Third Man, Citizen Kane, and his friendship with Orson Welles
Cotten as Holly Martins in?The Third Man?(1949) 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...
A Viewer’s Guide: How to Watch Grand Hotel (1932)
Grand Hotel, always the same. People come, people go. Nothing ever happens. courtesy Pre-Code.com 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...
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 her on...
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...
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
On the set of The African Queen (1951) 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...
A Viewer?s Guide: How to Watch The Gang?s All Here (1943)
sten ?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 It?s an intense little face. The Cupid?s Bow mouth and tiny, turned-up nose sit beneath large, dark, deeply?serious eyes. Dickie wasn?t just cute, he was...
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...
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...