Bess Meredyth Articles

Screenwriter Frederica Sagor Dead at 111: Wrote Movies for Norma Shearer (photo), Clara Bow, Louise Brooks Now, whether Frederica Sagor's Hollywood Babylon-like tales bear any resemblance to what actually happened at studio parties and private soirees, I can't tell. But on the professional side, one problem with the information found in The Shocking Miss Pilgrim is that studios invariably used numerous writers, whether male or [...]

Henry Fonda in The Grapes of Wrath FILM The Blue Bird d: Walter Lang; scr: Ernest Pascal The Grapes of Wrath d: John Ford; scr: Nunnally Johnson Kitty Foyle d: Sam Wood; scr: Dalton Trumbo The Letter d: William Wyler; scr: Howard Koch The Mark of Zorro d: Rouben Mamoulian; scr: John Tainton Foote, Garrett Fort, Bess Meredyth Pinocchio d: Hamilton Luske, Ben Sharpsteen; scr: [...]

Made at the dawn of the sound era, All Quiet on the Western Front remains the best war film ever made. Despite some brave (and not so brave) attempts by other filmmakers ever since, no other motion picture I've seen has captured the horrors of war with the honesty and the poignancy of Lewis Milestone's rendition of Erich Maria Remarque's pacifist novel. Lew Ayres plays [...]

"Mamoulian," a complete retrospective of Hollywood director Rouben Mamoulian (1897-1987), one of cinema's greatest stylists and innovators, will run at the Film Forum from Friday, September 7 through Tuesday, September 18. As per the Film Forum's press release, Mamoulian was born in Tbilisi, Georgia, to an Armenian family. He worked at the Moscow Art Theater while attending university, and, following a chance meeting with industrialist/philanthropist [...]