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  • Silent Cinema: Silent Movies 101

    You've decided to bite the bullet and give silent movies a try. Maybe you are taking some film history courses. Maybe you realized your knowledge of film started post-1930. Maybe you're just curious. Whatever your reason may be, you are going to have an exciting journey of discovery.If you are like most viewers, there will be a learning curve. Silent movies are not just sound movies with title cards added. They are a completely separate visual art and deserve to be treated as such...

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  • Traveling to the 2015 Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival

    I recently had the pleasure of attending the 2015 Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival, held annually at the Camelot Theatres in Palm Springs, California.The Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival is an intimate, relaxed setting providing an opportunity to chat with festival guests as well as fellow attendees. The movies were typically 75-95 minutes in length and spaced every three hours, beginning at 10:00 a.m., so unlike some other festivals, there was ample time to eat meals in between mov...

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  • The Old Corral: A Tribute to George Sherman

    Many of cinema's greatest directors worked in Westerns over the years (particularly in the '50s) -- Ford, Hawks, Daves, Mann, Wellman, Ray, etc. With such names turning out great, often epic films at a steady pace, it makes sense that some talented, lesser-known people, making smaller Westerns, would get lost in the shuffle of cinematic history. It's a real shame, because as fans of these things know, the smaller pictures are where a lot of the real treasure is found.Some of those...

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  • Inspired by Film Noir at TCM Classic Film Festival

    Though there were only three films noir programmed at the 2015 TCM Classic Film Festival: Too Late For Tears (1949), Reign of Terror (1949) and Nightmare Alley (1947), they were among the most popular choices of festivalgoers. The first two played to full capacity houses, with many in line turned away. These played a second time, once again to packed houses, as TBA (To Be Announced) selections on the final day of the festival. Hopefully TCM will note this audience p...

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  • Strange Science Serials, Part II: Bring on the Bad Guys

    An interesting thing about science-fiction serials of the 1930s is that, with the world poised on the brink of war yet again and scrupulously evil dictators presiding over much of the globe's territory, scenario writers and chapterplay directors really had to work hard to invent fictional villains who measured up to their real-life counterparts. The mid-1930s through the early 1940s gave matinee-goers some of the greatest evil-doers in the history of movies, thwarted week by week by square-ja...

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  • Dark Cinema - Una Merkel: Saucy Sidekick

    In her 1930s features, Una Merkel portrayed a variety of standout roles, including the shrill and frequently sobbing Sibyl in Private Lives (1931), the wronged girlfriend of David Manners in Man Wanted (1931), Jean Harlow's scheming secretary in Bombshell (1932), and a wisecracking chorus girl in 42nd Street (1933).She also portrayed some of the best pals a pre-Code gal could ask for -- characters who were not only loyal, dependable, and wise, b...

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  • Jeanne Eagels: A Life on Film

    Even the most learned scholars of classic film consider Jeanne Eagels a mystery. Although she was one of America's leading actresses during the early twentieth century, her first love was the stage, and only a handful of film performances survive today. After her untimely death, a controversial biography was published, and later adapted into an equally contentious movie.And there the trail ended -- until now. For too long, Jeanne Eagels has languished in the shadows of rumor and m...

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  • Fasten Your Seat Belts: Cars and the Movies

    Mobile. Motion. MOVE. From the start, films showed people moving at maximum speed, leading to the golden age of the railroad picture (teens and '20s), the aviation picture (late '20s through mid-50's), and the motorcycle picture ('60s and early '70s.) But cars have never gone out of style in the movies. No matter what Hollywood decade you explore, you'll find car races, car chases, car crashes, souped-up luxury cars, and comic junkers.Mack Sennett's Keystone Kops shorts (1912-1917...

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  • TV TIME: To Be Continued - Two-Part Episodes

    Before serialized drama became the norm in prime time television, it was a big deal to come across a two-part episode. You'd enjoy the program right up until some gripping cliffhanger unfolded, and then those momentous words 'TO BE CONTINUED...' would appear on screen.Of course, some classic programs regularly feature continuing stories; for example, every episode of Batman was a multi-parter. Perhaps the most famous two-part episode in television history is 'The...

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  • Old Corral: Fightin' Mad, Rebel Lad...Nick Adams

    Nicholas Aloysious Adamshock was the son of a Nanticoke, PA, coal miner. At 5'8' he wasn't tall enough or handsome enough to be a leading man, but his stubborn determination as Nick Adams and his personal refusal to recognize anything as impossible eventually paid off. With no experience, only a desire 'to be somebody'...an actor...a chance meeting with Jack Palance led to a role in a New York stage presentation of Tom Sawyer. From there he hitch-hiked to Hollywood in January 1950 an...

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