Reviews
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Where's That Been? - You Never Can Tell
It comes to us all in the end. Tycoon Andrew Lindsay of Lindsay Bakeries fame ('Everybody wants a Polly Cracker') has departed this world for a better one, leaving million to his faithful German Shepherd, King. The executrix of the Lindsay holdings is the millionaire's faithful secretary Ellen Hathaway (Peggy Dow), who certainly has her hands full dealing with every con man coming out of the w...
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Colorama: Ride the High Country
Ride the High Country was based on an old script by N.B. Stone, Jr. called Guns in the Afternoon. Stone was hired to work on the movie, but he was deep in the throes of alcoholism, and the script was given a major, though uncredited rewrite by Stone's friend, William S. Roberts, the screenwriter of The Magnificent Seven (1960).Sam Peckinpah was hired to di...
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Teen Scene: To Be or Not to Be
'To be or not to be? That is the question.' We all know the line from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Since its creation, it has crossed the ages, marking the world of theatre and literature. But, what if we mix Shakespeare, the theatre and WWII? That's what Ernst Lubitsch did with To Be or Not to Be (1942), one of the most ingenious comedies ever made.When I watched it for ...
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Where's That Been? - Kentucky Kernels
Long before Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers began dancing cheek-to-cheek in musicals like Top Hat (1935) and Swing Time (1936), the duo responsible for keeping the coffers at RKO filled were a pair of vaudeville comedians who answered to Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey. The zany pair was thrust into the cinematic limelight when they were picked to reprise their comic relief rol...
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Colorama: To Catch a Thief
To Catch a Thief (1955) was Cary Grant's third of four films with Alfred Hitchcock, (the others being Suspicion (1941), Notorious (1945), and North by Northwest (1959)), and his first with the director in a decade. It was also Grant's first movie since Dream Wife (1953); he was slowing down and toying with the idea of retirement. Grant was pushing fi...
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Teen Scene: The Kid
Everybody has heard of Charlie Chaplin, and if you haven't you're probably living on another planet or you're too young to read. Chaplin is known as the most famous entertainer of all time with a name celebrated by all generations. As for his films, the sad truth is not everybody who knows Chaplin, the actor, has necessarily seen his finished products.Everybody should see at least o...
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Tom and Jerry and Gene Deitch
The short-lived Gene Deitch era of Tom and Jerry cartoons, from 1961-1962, saw MGM enlist the Czechoslovakia-based Rembrandt Films to revive the franchise. Deitch spearheaded the creation of an unconventional batch of shorts that, though commercially successful in their time, have not enjoyed as much critical acclaim as others in the series.Legendary animator Chuck Jones to...
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Go Out to the Ball Game With It Happened in Flatbush
I'm a pushover for old movies that romanticize baseball, and It Happened to Flatbush certainly does that. However, this 1942 Fox film is not as much a love letter to the national pastime as much as it is one to Brooklyn. After credits roll over a shot of the Brooklyn Bridge, the whimsical opening titles inform us that the following fictional story occurs 'on a strange island just off t...
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Where's That Been? - Let Freedom Ring
As construction on the railroad heads toward the sleepy little hamlet of Clover City, the Old West is set to collide with the New. Granted, 'the Iron Horse' will bring much needed progress, but improvements of this sort also have an unfortunate tendency to attract particularly unsavory elements, exemplified in this tale by oleaginous Wall Street tycoon Jim Knox (Edward Arnold).Knox ...
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Where's That Been? - Station West
It's 1881, and a stagecoach pulling into Rock Pass sees a stranger (Dick Powell) exit the mode of transport, a man who answers to 'Haven.' We know he's a stranger because the desk clerk (Burl Ives) at the local hotel proclaims him as such; the clerk is a would-be balladeer in his spare time, and he warbles a little tune he's composed on the fly about the new man in town.But unbeknow...
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Where's That Been? - The Seas Beneath
As World War I comes to a close, a U.S. Navy vessel known as the S.S. Mystery Ship sets sail from a Yorktown harbor. It's not known as the 'Mystery Ship' because the Navy has run out of names (nor is it a reference to the Blues Image song 'Ride, Captain Ride' -- that would be silly); it's earned that designation because its mission is to be a decoy ship. Under the command of Lieutenant Robert '...
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Colorama: Lovely to Look At
Lovely to Look At (1952) is a lush Technicolor musical starring six members of MGM's extraordinary talent pool: Howard Keel, Kathryn Grayson, Red Skelton, Ann Miller, and Marge and Gower Champion. As you can imagine, it's packed with songs, dances, comedy routines, and a glittering finale with a sixteen minute fashion show/musical performance. This was not the first time th...
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Where's That Been? - The Family Secret
With his appearance as Charlie Chaplin's co-star in The Kid (1921), it wasn't long before child actor Jackie Coogan became Hollywood's Flavor of the Month. Granted, Coogan wasn't the first child thespian to hit it big in motion pictures -- 'Baby' Marie Osborne was an audience favorite as far back as 1914, for example -- but the impressive box office take for The Kid prompted t...
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Where's That Been? - Too Late for Tears
If the name 'Roy Huggins' strikes a familiar tone, it might be because you watch as much classic television as myself and my ClassicFlix colleague Rick Brooks. Working for Warner Brothers in the mid-1950s, Roy created two of their biggest small screen hits in Maverick and 77 Sunset Strip. In the 1960s, he was responsible for such shows as Bus Stop and Run for Your...
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Teen Scene: The Night of the Hunter
Charles Laughton was known as one of the most prolific actors of the 20th-century with films such as The Private Life of Henry VIII, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Witness for the Prosecution, and Spartacus. But in 1954 he started working on what would be his only film as a director. Unfortunately, upon release in 1955, The Night of the Hunter wasn't a...
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Where's That Been? - Ruthless
Tycoon Horace Woodruff Vendig (Zachary Scott) hosts a sumptuous dinner party at his formidable estate -- one to which his former business partner Vic Lambdin (Louis Hayward) has been invited, and one that Vic accompanies with pianist Mallory Flagg (Diana Lynn) at his side. At this affair, Vendig announces to all in attendance that he will donate a generous portion of his fortune (twenty-five mi...
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Where's That Been? - Spies
When asked in later years about his 1928 espionage thriller Spione (or Spies, to use its English title), director Fritz Lang would dismissively describe it as 'a small film with lots of action.' As befitting a movie with 'spies' as the title, Lang isn't exaggerating at all: there's an edge-of-your-seat car chase that follows a nail-biting train wreck, and a daring rescue-at-th...
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Hijinks Ensue with The Ant and the Aardvark
It's possible most fans today remember The Ant and the Aardvark as a television property only, but it began as a theatrical product. In the wake of Warner Brothers' decision to shutter its animation department in the early 1960s, executive David DePatie left to form his own studio, enlisting longtime director Friz Freleng. The massive popularity of DePatie-Freleng's animated titles for...
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Where's That Been? - Try and Get Me!
In 1933, Brooke Hart, heir to the Leopold Hart and Son department store in San Jose, California, made national headlines after being kidnapped for ransom and later murdered. The alleged suspects, Thomas Harold Thurmond and John M. Holmes, were strung up in a park by a vigilante mob before they could receive their day in court. (It is often referenced as 'the last lynching in California,' though...
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Colorama: Desk Set
Desk Set (1957) was the eighth film featuring the incomparable screen duo of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy whose real life love translated brilliantly to the screen in crackling films like Woman of the Year (1942), Adam's Rib (1949), and Pat and Mike (1952).But Desk Set is notable as the first non-MGM movie for the pair (Desk Se...
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