Articles
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Anne Baxter: All About Anne
Anne Baxter is probably best remembered today for her Oscar-winning supporting role in The Razor's Edge (1946) and her Oscar-nominated performance in All About Eve (1950), but a closer look at her career shows she starred in a great many excellent films throughout the 1940s and '50s. Baxter, the granddaughter of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright, was born in Indiana on May 2, 1923. Anne aspired to an acting career from a young age, and she was just 13 when she ...
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Hitchcock: The Nooks and Crannies
As a twelve-year-old in the mid-60's, I watched whatever vintage films the networks aired (these were mostly from the mid-50's on up) and whatever aired on the matinee movie on Cleveland's local stations. Alfred Hitchcock was my favorite director. Back then, station libraries had very few films predating WWII, and for years Saboteur (1942) was the earliest Hitchcock I knew. I watched it whenever it ran, if I didn't have to be in school, and after repeated viewings I anticipated spec...
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Carole Lombard: Screwball Comedienne
January 16th, 2014, marked the 72nd anniversary of actress Carole Lombard's tragically early death in the crash of TWA Flight 3. Lombard was on a highly successful war bonds drive just weeks after Pearl Harbor when her plane crashed outside Las Vegas, Nevada, killing all 22 people on board. Details of Lombard's life and the ill-fated flight have been chronicled in Robert Matzen's outstanding new book Fireball. On the flight's anniversary I attended a lecture...
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Silent Cinema: Buster Keaton, Part One (The Roscoe Arbuckle Years, 1917-1920)
Of all the developments that made 1917 such a landmark year in film - the industry-wide adoption of what is now known as 'classical continuity editing,' Mary Pickford's emergence as the most powerful woman in Hollywood history, Charlie Chaplin
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The Old Corral: Fred MacMurray Rides the '50s West
We don't think about it so much today, but at a certain point in time, Fred MacMurray was a big star in Hollywood and one of the highest paid. And certainly one of the most versatile, as he bounced from breezy stuff like The Egg And I (1947) to the noir-est of noir, Double Indemnity (1944), with incredible ease. As much as we liked him when he played, what we assume, was himself (the kind, wise, easy-going fatherly type), he really shined when cast against that - proven by h...
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Classics 101: Eight Wonders, Twelve Movies - A History of King Kong
The original King Kong was one of the most ballyhooed of all motion pictures, and yet it’s quite the rarity: a film that lived up to all the hyperbole. It truly was – and remains – the Eighth Wonder of the World, moving the artistry and technology of filmmaking ahead in 60-foot strides. A monster hit in 1933 and subsequent re-re-releases, Kong has been remade and ripped off several times, which is no surprise. What IS surprising is most of the Sons of Kong ...
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Doris Day: The Romantic Sweetheart
One of our greatest stars, Doris Day, recently celebrated her 90th birthday. Day made a rare public appearance for the occasion, delighting not only fans present to see her in person, but those of us who were happy to see smiling new photos of the beloved singer-actress. Day was the biggest female box office star in history, but she's has been off the screen for four decades, At this year's TCM Classic Film Festival, TCM staffers shared that Doris is Number One on their wish-list...
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Dying is Easy - Comedy is Hard
Dying is easy – comedy is hard. This show biz byword has been around for ages, but no one knows who said it first. It has been attributed to Donald Crisp and to Edmund Gwenn on his deathbed, but it may go back to some unsung vaudeville comic. Its meaning is clear, and comic actors often insist that comedy is harder to play tha...
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Victor Mature: An Epic Life
There's an oft-repeated anecdote about Victor Mature, whose application for membership in a fancy country club was turned down because he was a member of the lowly acting profession. Mature is reported to have said something along the lines of 'I'm no actor, and I've got the films to prove it!' Whether apocryphal or not, the quote embodies Mature's lighthearted approach to his life and career, and it also belies the fact that he was, in fact, a hardworking man and a very fine act...
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TV TIME: Classic TV Songs
Theme songs are an essential part of classic television history, with many more memorable and beloved than the series themselves, but let's not neglect the great songs that appear within some of the best TV programs of the past. I hereby salute my favorites, focusing on numbers performed during episodes of fictional series. In other words, no variety show appearances, and I ...
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Classics 101: Our Gang
When parents and grandparents ask me – and they often do – what’s the secret to turning young people on to the wonders of vintage black and white movies, I invariably answer “The Little Rascals!!!” (with just that level of enthusiasm, and sometimes I make the “okay” sign with my fingers and say “O-TAY”). Here’s how it’s always worked for me, ...
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TV Time: Father's Day Lessons
Father's Day is not just an opportunity for me to receive a new tie, but is a chance to reflect on my own skills and abilities as a dad. With today's modern conveniences, it's easy for me to gain wisdom by looking at scholarly research, perusing best-selling books by authors, and consulting experienced fathers around me. Of course, I ignore all those resources and turn to classic television instead.
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Pre-Code Obsession: Clara Bow - Life As the 'It' Girl
It was the tail end of the silent era, and screen goddess Clara Bow was surrounded by users, liars, thieves and con artists. Clara was Hollywood's first and still-reigning It Girl; vivacious, beautiful, modern and talented, audiences loved Clara and she loved them back. She had far less love for the studios she worked for, Hollywood snobs, and the agents and executives who ran her career as though she were a machine to be pushed until it broke down, and then discarded for something new.
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Silent Cinema: Douglas Fairbanks - The King of Hollywood
He was called 'The King of Hollywood' and if any actor during the Silent Era could credibly claim to be more popular than Charlie Chaplin, it was Elton Thomas Ullman, better known to his adoring public as Douglas Fairbanks. The star of forty-eight movies, including some of the greatest action films of all time, Fairbanks was a superstar before the...
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The Old Corral: Wide Screen, Narrow Budget - The Regalscope Westerns
By the mid-1950s, the CinemaScope widescreen process had done what it set out to do — help bring back some of the audiences lost to television. With TV still black and white (and with tinny monaural sound), 20th Century-Fox decreed that all their CinemaScope pictures would be in color and stereo. Independent B-producer Robert Lippert and Spyros Skouras, the head of 20th Century-Fox, cooked up Regal Films, Inc. — an independent ...
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Dark Cinema: Partners in Crime - The Sidekicks of Film Noir
The antiheroes of film noir are almost always loners. Hardboiled detectives trying to clear their name, gangsters who learned early on that no one could be trusted, a lone insurance investigator certain there's a big story underneath that mundane pile of paperwork; sure, they might have some pals here and there to do them a favor, a girl or two will come and go in their lives, but at the heart of it, they walk alone. It's a defining characteristic of the film noir cycle, so ...
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Now That's Acting!
Classic Films archive a century of acting styles. Pick and choose among the decades of cinema and you can see the last holdovers of declamatory stage acting; camera-oriented emoting in both flamboyant (John Gilbert) and restrained (Buster Keaton) modes; the talkie era’s celebration of the vernacular; the Group Theatre era of realistic acting and the common man (John Garfield);...
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Classics 101: A Primer on Serials Part II - Super Heroes Strike Back
WW2 brought a new type of action hero to the serial cinema screen: the patriotic G-Man battling enemy agents (at first, unnamed but obviously German; later, they wore so many swastikas you’d swear der Fuhrer had a “minimum bling requirement”). Sometimes, the good guys wore snap-brimmed hats and grey suits; sometimes, capes and tights and masks. But they were both equally heroic in the eyes of kids of the day.
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TV Time: Variety Tonight!
There are many things modern prime time television just doesn't do anymore, such as panel game shows and Westerns, but perhaps the most notable moribund genre is the variety show. You get elements of it in late night, on the Spanish-language channels and in awards ceremonies, but the networks rarely even try to mount a genuine variety series.
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