Thomas Meighan, THE LOST SQUADRON at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum

Via Thomas Gladysz’s article in the Los Angeles Examiner:
The Edison Theatre at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum in the Northern California town of Fremont has been screening silent films and early talkies for quite some time. As Gladysz explains in his article, that area was home to the western studios of the Chicago-based Essanay film company, among whose stars at one point were Gloria Swanson; Charles Chaplin; matinee idol Francis X. Bushman (best remembered for his villain in the 1925 version of Ben-Hur); and company co-owner Gilbert M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson (the "ay" in Essanay; the "ess" was George K. Spoor), the first cowboy star.
The Niles Essanay Museum’s line-up for the rest of April [...]

Jody McCrea

According to his official website, Jody McCrea, the actor-son of Frances Dee and Joel McCrea, died in in Roswell, New Mexico, of cardiac arrest on April 4. He was 74.
Born on Sept. 6, 1934, in Los Angeles, Jody McCrea was the oldest of McCrea and Dee’s three sons. Frances Dee was best known for playing sweet young things in the 1930s, e.g., Little Women and The Gay Deception (though her most remarkable performance at that time was the nymphomaniac in Blood Money), and for the atmospheric I Walked with a Zombie in 1943. Joel McCrea starred in dozens of dramas and comedies in the 1930s and 1940s, including the classics The Palm Beach Story (1942) [...]

Best Films – 1940

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: Ted Sears, Otto Englander and others
Pride and Prejudice
d: Robert Z. Leonard; scr: Aldous Huxley, Jane Murfin
Rebecca
d: Alfred Hitchcock; scr: Robert E. Sherwood, Joan Harrison
Waterloo Bridge
d: Mervyn LeRoy; scr: S.N. Behrman, Hans Rameau, George Froeschel
 

Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday
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Busman’s Honeymoon / Haunted Honeymoon
d: Arthur B. Woods; scr: Monckton Hoffe, Angus MacPhail, Harold Goldman
His Girl Friday
d: Howard Hawks; scr: Charles Lederer
The Long Voyage Home
d: John [...]

Best Films – 1937

Robert Taylor, Greta Garbo in Camille
FILM
The Awful Truth
d, scr: Leo McCarey
Camille
d: George Cukor; scr: Frances Marion, James Hilton, Zoe Akins
The Hurricane
d: John Ford; scr: Dudley Nichols, Oliver H. P. Garrett
The Last of Mrs. Cheyney
d: Richard Boleslawski; scr: Leon Gordon, Samson Raphaelson, Monckton Hoffe
Lost Horizon
d: Frank Capra; scr: Robert Riskin
Night Must Fall
d: Richard Thorpe; scr: John Van Druten
Les Perles de la couronne / Pearls of the Crown
d: Sacha Guitry, Christian-Jacque; scr: Sacha Guitry
The Prisoner of Zenda
d: John Cromwell; scr: Wells Root, John G. Balderstone, Donald Ogden Stewart
Quality Street
d: George Stevens; scr: Mortimer Offner, Allan Scott
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
d: David Hand; scr: Ted Sears, Richard Creedon and others
A Star Is Born
d: William A. Wellman; scr: Dorothy Parker, [...]

Joel McCrea at LACMA

“People say I’m a one-note actor, but the way I figure it, those other guys are just looking for that one right note.” — Joel McCrea
 
Between October 14–November 5, 2005, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) will be presenting a Centenary Tribute to Joel McCrea. The film series will feature fourteen films starring one of Hollywood’s most underrated light comedians — one who, at his best, was a very accomplished dramatic actor, too.
Born in the Los Angeles suburb of South Pasadena in 1905, Joel McCrea began his film career as an extra in the late 1920s. (He can be spotted in a crowd scene in the 1927 Marion Davies silent comedy The Fair Co-Ed.) In a mere [...]

Best Films – 1943

Set in a 17th-century Danish village, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s masterful Vredens dag / Day of Wrath is a stark, but deeply felt indictment against religious fanaticism and intolerance. Moving performances by ingénue Lisbeth Modin and accused witch Anna Svierkier add a touch of humanity to the horrors shown on screen. It is not a coincidence that Vredens Dag was made in 1943, a time when Denmark was under Nazi occupation. The parallels — and the interconnectedness — between political and religious control are made quite clear in this harrowing masterwork.
 
FILM
Northern Pursuit
d: Raoul Walsh; scr: Frank Gruber, Alvah Bessie
This Land Is Mine
d: Jean Renoir; scr: Dudley Nichols
Vredens dag / Day of Wrath
d: Carl Theodor Dreyer; scr: Carl Dreyer, [...]