Claire Bloom TCM Schedule

Claire Bloom on Turner Classic Movies

Claire Bloom, Richard Burton in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Claire Bloom on TCM
Pacific Time
31 Monday
3:00 AM Wonderful World Of The Brothers Grimm, The (1962)
Fanciful biography of the German fairy-tale collectors, with reenactments of three of their stories. Cast: Laurence Harvey, Claire Bloom, Barbara Eden. Dir: Henry Levin, George Pal. C-136 mins.
5:30 AM Outrage, The (1964)
A Mexican bandit’s crimes receive wildly different interpretations from four witnesses. Cast: Paul Newman, Claire Bloom, Edward G. Robinson. Dir: Martin Ritt. BW-96 mins.
7:30 AM Brothers Karamazov, The (1958)
In this adaptation of the Dostoevsky classic, four brothers fight to adjust to the death of their domineering father. Cast: Yul Brynner, Maria Schell, [...]

Hollywood’s Greatest Year in New York City

Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind (top); Bette Davis, Geraldine Fitzgerald in Dark Victory (middle); Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon in Wuthering Heights (bottom)

Gone with the Wind, the 1939 Best Picture winner, will kick off the New York presentation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ latest screening series, "Hollywood’s Greatest Year: The Best Picture Nominees of 1939," on Saturday, June 20, at 12:30 p.m. at the Academy’s Theater in New York City. Turner Classic Movies host and film historian Robert Osborne will host the event.
"Hollywood’s Greatest Year" will continue through mid-October, showcasing all 10 Best Picture nominees from 1939. Screenings will take place on Monday at 7:30 p.m., [...]

WUTHERING HEIGHTS Screening

The 1939 Best Picture nominee Wuthering Heights, directed by William Wyler, and starring Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier, will be the next feature in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ series “Hollywood’s Greatest Year: The Best Picture Nominees of 1939.” The Wuthering Heights screening will take place on Monday, June 8, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
Starting at 7 p.m., the feature will be preceded by the fourth chapter of the 1939 serial Buck Rogers, starring Buster Crabbe and Constance Moore, and the animated short The Pointer, starring Mickey Mouse and Pluto.
According to Samuel Goldwyn biographer A. Scott Berg, Wuthering Heights was the producer’s favorite among his films. [...]

Joseph L. Mankiewicz Tribute: SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER

Joseph L. Mankiewicz Centennial – Part I
And if Guys and Dolls (1955) was a bore — just about everyone in this film musical is miscast, from Brando to Mankiewicz himself — the director recovered his touch with the adult (and bizarre) Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), a psychotic psychological drama adapted by Gore Vidal and (officially) Tennessee Williams from Williams’s own play. (Williams later said he had nothing to do with the film version.)
The story follows a young woman (Elizabeth Taylor) who is sent to a psychiatric hospital after she suffers a nervous breakdown following some horrific traumatic experience. Things can get quite heady — bad pun intended — when you mix traditional Southern [...]

Jack Cardiff

Cinematographer and director Jack Cardiff, one of the early masters of color cinematography, has died. He was 94.
Cardiff’s work as a cinematographer was quite eclectic, ranging from his partnership with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger in the British-made Black Narcissus (1945) and The Red Shoes (1948) to prestigious international productions such as John Huston’s The African Queen (1951) and King Vidor’s War and Peace (1956), and to low-brow commercial fare such as Conan the Destroyer (1984) and Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985).
I’ve never watched Conan or Rambo, but I have watched more than 20 of Cardiff’s 60 or so features, and I can testify that whether working in art-house or commercial fare, Cardiff’s cinematography was invariably one [...]

QUEEN CHRISTINA – Greta Garbo, John Gilbert

Queen Christina (1933)
Direction: Rouben Mamoulian
Screenplay: H. M. Harwood and S. N. Behrman
Cast: Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Ian Keith, Lewis Stone, Elizabeth Young, C. Aubrey Smith, Reginald Owen, David Torrence
 

 

One of the most ambitious productions of the early 1930s, Queen Christina remains surprisingly modern in its execution thanks in large part to Rouben Mamoulian’s assured hand. Those looking for historical accuracy in the film, however, will be greatly disappointed, for credited screenwriters H. M. Harwood and S. N. Behrman kept themselves busy concocting a highly fictionalized version of the Swedish queen; one who experiences an all-consuming and ultimately tragic love affair with a Spanish envoy. (Garbo biographer Mark Vieira explains [see below] that credited screenwriter — and close Garbo friend [...]

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 [...]

Marc Lawrence

Actor Marc Lawrence died of heart failure in Palm Springs, about 160 km east of Los Angeles, on Nov. 27. He was 95.
The Brooklyn-born (as Max Goldsmith) rough-looking actor, who once described himself as “pock-marked and oily-skinned,” appeared in more than 100 films from the early 1930s to the beginning of the 21st century, generally playing vicious outlaws.
Having begun his acting career with Eva Le Gallienne’s repertory company, Lawrence moved to Los Angeles in 1932 and started playing small parts in films. Four years later, he landed a contract at Harry Cohn’s Columbia Pictures.
Among his dozens of films during that period are Final Hour (1936); Criminals of the Air (1937), with a very young Rita Hayworth (with whom Lawrence claimed [...]

MARATHON MAN – Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier

Marathon Man (1976)
Direction: John Schlesinger
Screenplay: William Goldman, from Goldman’s novel
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, Roy Scheider, William Devane, Marthe Keller, Fritz Weaver, Richard Bright, Marc Lawrence
 

 
The worst sin a good-guy-vs.-bad-guy movie can commit is to — unintentionally — have us root for the evildoer. That is exactly what screenwriter William Goldman (adapting his own novel, reportedly with some help from Robert Towne) and director John Schlesinger, he of Darling, Midnight Cowboy, and Sunday, Bloody Sunday, achieve in the thrill-less "thriller" Marathon Man. Adding insult to injury, the villain I came to root for was a horrific Nazi war criminal, while the hero that bored me to tears was a pacifist Jew.
Now, how could anyone manage to [...]

NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA d: Franklin J. Schaffner

Nicholas and Alexandra (1971)
Direction: Franklin J. Schaffner
Screenplay: James Goldman; from Robert K. Massie’s 1967 historical novel
Cast: Michael Jayston, Janet Suzman, Irene Worth, Laurence Olivier, Tom Baker, Harry Andrews, Michael Bryant, Maurice Denham, Jack Hawkins, Ian Holm, John McEnery, Eric Porter, Michael Redgrave, Alan Webb, Curd Jürgens, Lynne Frederick, Roderic Nobel
 

Nicholas and Alexandra is surely one of the most sumptuous productions ever made. The elaborate sets and costumes, Richard Rodney Bennett’s lush musical score, and the richly textured cinematography (courtesy of frequent David Lean collaborator Frederick A. Young) provide the perfect period atmosphere for this historical epic. Missing, however, is a screenplay that offers dialogue instead of speeches, and a directorial hand that brings out truth instead of melodrama.
Nicholas [...]