Shadows of Russia: Communism on TCM

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 [...]

Charles Boyer, Irene Dunne in LOVE AFFAIR Screening

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 [...]

Great Directors Series on Turner Classic Movies

Jeanne Moreau, Henri Serre, Oskar Werner in François Truffaut’s Jules et Jim

In June, Turner Classic Movies‘ month-long series "Great Directors" will be celebrating the efforts of 52 films directors, from past and present, from Hollywood and overseas (though, as to be expected, mostly Hollywood).
Among TCM’s "greats" are, inevitably, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, Steven Spielberg, and John Ford, but also Jacques Tourneur, Mervyn LeRoy, and Budd Boetticher.
Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini, Carol Reed, and Ingmar Bergman are four of the non-Hollywood filmmakers who have been included in the series.
Each weekday of the "Great Directors" series will feature two directors — one during the day; the other at night.  The daytime lineup includes Victor Fleming (June [...]

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
CHECK THESE OUT
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, [...]

Leo McCarey’s GOING MY WAY Oscar for Sale

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 [...]

Best Films – 1942

FILM
Bambi
d: David Hand; scr: Larry Morey and others
The Black Swan
d: Henry King; scr: Ben Hecht, Seton I. Miller
Casablanca
d: Michael Curtiz; scr: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, Howard Koch
Johnny Eager
d: Mervyn LeRoy; scr: John Lee Mahin, James Edward Grant
The Magnificent Ambersons
d, scr: Orson Welles
The Major and the Minor
d: Billy Wilder; scr: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder
Once Upon a Honeymoon
d: Leo McCarey; scr: Sheridan Gibney
Random Harvest
d: Mervyn LeRoy; scr: Claudine West, George Froeschel, Arthur Wimperis
Tales of Manhattan
d: Julien Duvivier; scr: Ben Hecht, Ferenc Molnar, Donald Ogden Stewart, Samuel Hoffenstein, Alan Campbell, Ladislas Fodor, Laslo Vadnay, Laszlo Gorog, Lamar Trotti, Henry Blankfort
The Talk of the Town
d: George Stevens; scr: Irwin Shaw, Sidney Buchman
 

Carole Lombard, [...]