by Lesley Gaspar | Jan 18, 2022 | 1960s, Academy Awards, Adolph Deutsch, Billy Wilder, Blogathons, Classic movies, Joseph LaShelle
Why do I watch The Apartment whenever it’s on, and why, after all these viewings, do I get a little bit excited every time it’s on the schedule? Same reason I watch a lot of movies the same way. I watch them the same way I listen to music I love, which is to say, not...
by Lesley Gaspar | Dec 5, 2020 | 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, Academy Awards, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Blogathons, Classic movies, Mary Astor, Pre-Code films, Silent film, Women's Pictures
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...
by Lesley Gaspar | Nov 17, 2019 | 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, Academy Awards, Charles Coburn, Classic movies, Thomas Mitchell
He’s one of the preeminent character actors of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and, like Sydney Greenstreet and Marie Dressler, among the small club of performers who started hugely successful movie careers around age 60, which at the time was not “the new 50,” it was...
by Lesley Gaspar | Feb 17, 2019 | 1950s, Academy Awards, Arthur Kennedy, Blogathons, Classic movies, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Shirley MacLaine, Vincente Minnelli
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...
by Lesley Gaspar | Dec 16, 2018 | 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, Academy Awards, Blogathons, Charles Coburn, Charles Laughton, Classic movies, Frank Capra, Howard Hawks, Jean Arthur, John Barrymore, John Ford, John Wayne, 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...
by Lesley Gaspar | Jul 10, 2016 | 1930s, Academy Awards, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Blogathons, Cinematographers, Classic movies, Edmund Goulding, Greta Garbo, Irving Thalberg, John Barrymore, Lewis Stone, Lionel Barrymore, MGM, Pre-Code films, Producers, Romance, Studios, Vicki Baum, Wallace Beery, William Daniels
?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...
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