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...
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...
Day 6: Order in the Court! The Classic Courtroom Movie Blogathon concludes (in extra innings)?
Oyez, oyez! Welcome to Day 6, the final day of our courtroom extravaganza! In the first five?days we saw, among others, posts on Hitchcock worth knowing better (The Paradine Case), lynching (Fritz Lang?s?Fury), Louise Brooks?s Lulu in?Pandora?s Box,?Kramer vs. Kramer,...
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...
Rising from the Ashes: Buster Keaton?s Most Amazing Stunt
Remember: If it bends, it?s funny. If it breaks, it isn?t. ?Lester (Alan Alda),?Crimes and Misdemeanors There was nothing funny about it when Buster Keaton broke. Keaton?s fall is legendary. Most of the time it?s told sketchily, and too often as if it were the end.?As...
Happy Valentine?s Day weekend! Welcome to the You Must Remember This?A Kiss Is Just a Kiss blogathon!
We?re live! Welcome to the?You Must Remember This? Blogathon! Kisses blistering and chilled, delirious and hard-boiled, Judas kisses, cartoon kisses, and of course the kiss-off? Here?s our Valentine?s Day celebration of screen kisses. New entries will be posted as...
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...
Safe in Hell (1931)
William Wellman directed five movies in 1931, and?Safe in Hell?was the last of them. The movie was made under the same conditions as the other four, pretty much the same as several hundred others released that year by Hollywood studios. The mass production methods...
Newsreels of the Early 1930s: Two Huge Stories About the Two-Way Mirror Between Fact and Fiction
Real life and entertainment, politics and policy. The Bonus Army?Herbert Hoover, FDR, and William Randolph Hearst,?Gabriel Over the White House;?Busby Berkeley and ?Remember My Forgotten Man? in?Gold Diggers of 1933 The movie industry?s successful smear campaign...