Best Films – 1934

Norma Shearer in The Barretts of Wimpole Street
FILM
The Barretts of Wimpole Street
d: Sidney Franklin; scr: Ernest Vajda, Claudine West, Donald Ogden Stewart
The Count of Monte Cristo
d: Rowland V. Lee; scr: Philip Dunne, Dan Totheroh, Rowland V. Lee
The Gay Divorcee
d: Mark Sandrich; scr: George Marion Jr., Dorothy Yost, Edward Kaufman
Hide-out
d: W. S. Van Dyke; scr: Albert Hackett, Frances Goodrich
The Merry Widow
d: Ernst Lubitsch; scr: Samson Raphaelson, Ernest Vajda
 

Fredric March, Evelyn Venable in Death Takes a Holiday
CHECK THESE OUT
Broadway Bill
d: Frank Capra; scr: Robert Riskin
Death Takes a Holiday
d: Mitchell Leisen; scr: Maxwell Anderson, Gladys Lehman
Gold
d: Karl Hartl; scr: Rolf E. Vanloo
Here Comes the Navy
d: Lloyd Bacon; scr: Earl Baldwin, Ben Markson
Maskerade / Masquerade in Vienna
d: Willi Forst; scr: [...]

Joseph Pevney

Director Joseph Pevney died this past May 18. He was 96.
Pevney was best known — among the few who’d heard of him — for his 1950s B-movies made at Universal, though beginning in the late 1950s he went on to direct countless episodes of TV series ranging from Bewitched and The Big Valley to Star Trek and The Incredible Hulk.
Among Pevney’s 1950s efforts are the Frank Sinatra drama Meet Danny Wilson (1951), made when Sinatra’s career was in the doldrums; Desert Legion (1953), starring Alan Ladd; It Happens Every Thursday (1952), Loretta Young’s last feature film; and 3 Ring Circus (1954), with Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, and Joanne Dru.
Also, the over-the-top melodrama Female on the Beach (photo, 1954), which [...]

Virginia Mayo

Virginia Mayo, the star of several Technicolor productions of the 1940s and 1950s, died today at a nursing home in the Los Angeles suburb of Thousand Oaks. Mayo, who was 84, had been in poor health since contracting pneumonia a year ago.
Beginning her career as a chorus girl, the honey-blonde Virginia Mayo (born Virginia Clara Jones on Nov. 30, 1920, in St. Louis, Missouri) soon became one of the leading exponents of Technicolored female beauty during the post-World War II era. Never a great actress, she was always interesting to look at. And if her performances lacked warmth, Mayo exuded more than enough sultriness to compensate for that deficiency.
Initially a Samuel Goldwyn contract player, Mayo went from bit parts [...]

Best Films – 1949

Spencer Tracy, Judy Holliday, Katharine Hepburn in Adam’s Rib
FILM
Adam’s Rib
d: George Cukor; scr: Ruth Gordon, Garson Kanin
The Heiress
d: William Wyler; scr: Ruth Goetz, Augustus Goetz
I Was a Male War Bride
d: Howard Hawks; scr: Charles Lederer, Hagar Wilde, Leonard Spiegelglass
On the Town
d: Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly; scr: Betty Comden, Adolph Green
The Passionate Friends
d: David Lean; scr: Eric Ambler
Passport to Pimlico
d: Henry Cornelius; scr: T. E. B. Clarke
A Run for Your Money
d: Charles Frend; scr: Richard Hughes, Charles Frend, Leslie Norman
The Set-Up
d: Robert Wise; scr: Art Cohn
Whisky Galore
d: Alexander Mackendrick; scr: Compton Mackenzie, Angus Macphail
White Heat
d: Raoul Walsh; scr: Ivan Goff, Ben Roberts
 

Rudy Vallee, Olga San Juan, Betty Grable in The Beautiful [...]