Irene Dunne, Charles Boyer in Leo McCarey’s Love Affair Leo McCarey on TCM: GOING MY WAY, DUCK SOUP, LOVE AFFAIR, MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW Leo McCarey’s Love Affair (1939) is now mostly forgotten, whereas its 1957 remake (also by McCarey), An Affair to Remember, remains a romance classic. In the original, in place of Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr we have Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne as the star-crossed lovers. Boyer would become a fantastic dramatic actor in later years (e.g., Max Ophüls’ Madame De…), but here he’s just Hollywood’s boring version of the "suave continental." Irene Dunne, on the other hand, was one of the best actresses of the ’30s and ’40s. She’s fine in Love Affair, though it’s not one of her greatest…



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Leo McCarey Movie Schedule: From Irene Dunne/Charles Boyer Romance to Marx Brothers Satire

Bing Crosby, Gene Lockhart, Barry Fitzgerald, Going My Way Leo McCarey is Turner Classic Movies’ Director of the Evening this Christmas. Considering that McCarey was an ardent Catholic, TCM has made quite an appropriate choice. Unfortunately, McCarey’s anti-Red My Son John — despite the fact that the Bible plays a prominent role in that film — hasn’t been included on the TCM film roster. Instead, TCM watchers will have the chance to check out Going My Way, Make Way for Tomorrow, Duck Soup, The Milky Way, Love Affair, and Once Upon a Honeymoon. The year Billy Wilder’s film noir classic Double Indemnity was nominated for Best Picture — and Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, Vincente Minnelli’s Meet Me in St. Louis, and Otto Preminger’s Laura weren’t —…



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Leo McCarey on TCM: GOING MY WAY, DUCK SOUP, LOVE AFFAIR

Beulah Bondi in Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW Review Part I What’s good about Make Way for Tomorrow are the brilliant performances, especially by Beulah Bondi, Fay Bainter, and Victor Moore. The intelligent screenplay by Viña Delmar, based on Josephine Lawrence’s novel, and Helen Leary and Nolan Leary’s play, oftentimes feels realistic. Leo McCarey, for his part, directs the proceedings with an ample amount of humor; not the belly-laugh kind, but as a droll observation about the clash of generations. So what’s not to like in Make Way for Tomorrow? Well, the two elderly characters are still active an spry, and they both still have their brains. They are not senile or handicapped in any way. They don’t need custodial…



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MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW Review Pt.2 - Beulah Bondi, Victor Moore, Fay Bainter

MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW (1937) Director: Leo McCarey Cast: Victor Moore, Beulah Bondi, Fay Bainter, Thomas Mitchell, Porter Hall, Barbara Read, Elisabeth Risdon, Maurice Moscovitch, Minna Gombell, Louise Beavers Screenplay: Viña Delmar; from Josephine Lawrence’s novel, and Helen Leary and Nolan Leary’s play Beulah Bondi, Victor Moore, Make Way for Tomorrow The main conflict in Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow revolves around an elderly couple, Barkley and Lucy Cooper (Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi), who lose their home and are forced to move in with their adult children. The sons and daughters hesitate, then reluctantly agree to house the couple. But because they have limited space in their own homes, they have to take their parents in separately. And only out of a sense…



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MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW Leo McCarey

Neva Patterson, Cary Grant, Richard Denning, Deborah Kerr, An Affair to Remember Neva Patterson, best known for her role as Cary Grant’s fiancee in Leo McCarey’s 1957 romantic comedy classic An Affair to Remember, died Tuesday, Dec. 14, at her home in the Los Angeles suburb of Brentwood of complications from a broken hip. Patterson was 90. A stage, screen, and television actress, Patterson (born in Nevada, Iowa, on Feb. 22, 1920) appeared in dozens of TV series, 15 features, and on Broadway originated the role of The Seven Year Itch’s Helen Sherman, played by Evelyn Keyes in Billy Wilder’s 1955 film. But despite good supporting roles in Richard Quine’s funny Judy Holliday comedy The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956), Walter Lang’s Desk Set (1957), and…



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Neva Patterson Dies: Cary Grant’s Fiancee in AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER

Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas in Ninotchka (top); Barbra Streisand, Robert Redford in The Way We Were (bottom) From the Romanovs’ last stand to Warren Beatty’s first solo directorial effort: On every Wednesday in January 2010, Turner Classic Movies will present the 20-film festival "Shadows of Russia," a showcase of Hollywood movies portraying Russia (and/or the Soviet Union) and the sociopolitical reverberations of Communism throughout the 20th century. Among the scheduled films are classics such as Ninotchka, The Manchurian Candidate, and Reds, in addition to lesser-known fare like Counter-Attack, I Was a Communist for the FBI, and The Strawberry Statement. Get ready for some laughs and a few tears — mostly laughs. And mostly of the unintended kind. I must red-facedly (no pun intended) admit that…



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Shadows of Russia: Communism on TCM

Love Affair, one of the 1939 Best Picture nominees, is next in line in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ series “Hollywood’s Greatest Year: The Best Picture Nominees of 1939” on Monday, June 22, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. Prior to the film, beginning at 7 p.m., the sixth chapter of the 1939 serial Buck Rogers, starring Buster Crabbe and Constance Moore, and the Warner Bros. Oscar-nominated cartoon Detouring America, directed by Tex Avery, will be screened. Leo McCarey produced, directed and co-wrote (with Mildred Cram) the story for Love Affair (the actual screenplay was credited to Delmer Daves and Donald Ogden Stewart), a romantic melodrama starring Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne as a couple who…



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Charles Boyer, Irene Dunne in LOVE AFFAIR Screening

Via the Associated Press / Metromix.com: Leo McCarey’s Best Director Academy Award for the 1944 Best Film winner Going My Way is going to be auctioned by an anonymous collector. The opening bid is US$25,000. [The McCarey Oscar statuette was later revealed as counterfeit. Read more here.] McCarey, who died in 1969 at age 70, directed several Hollywood classics, including The Awful Truth (1937), for which he won his first Best Director Oscar, the romantic melodrama Love Affair (1939), and its remake, An Affair to Remember (1957). McCarey was also well-known for his right-wing politics. Going My Way was one of his most successful films. Starring Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald (both also won Oscars, as Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively), the sentimental…



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Leo McCarey’s GOING MY WAY Oscar for Sale