Bette Davis on TCM

No rare Bette Davis flicks on her Turner Classic Movies‘ "Summer Under the Stars" day, Saturday, Aug. 8.
That’s too bad, as TCM now has access to Columbia’s film library. They could have unearthed Davis’ early Columbia flick The Menace (1931), which isn’t very good, but it’s rare and it’s Bette Davis. Also, there’s the little-seen, Columbia-distributed, political drama Storm Center (1956), in which Davis co-stars with Kim Hunter, who happened to be blacklisted during the anti-Red hysteria of the 1950s. Well, maybe later in the year…
I can’t say I’m a huge Bette Davis fan, but I do like watching her. In fact, I find several of her performances to be among the best ever committed to [...]

Best Films – 1941

Orson Welles in Citizen Kane
FILM
Cheers for Miss Bishop
d: Tay Garnett; scr: Sheridan Gibney, Adelaide Heilbron
Citizen Kane
d: Orson Welles; scr: Herman J. Mankiewicz, Orson Welles
The Devil and Miss Jones
d: Sam Wood; scr: Norman Krasna
Dumbo
d: Ben Sharpsteen; scr: Joe Grant, Dick Huemer and others
The Great Lie
d: Edmund Goulding; scr: Lenore J. Coffee
Here Comes Mr. Jordan
d: Alexander Hall; scr: Seton I. Miller, Sidney Buchman
The Lady Eve
d, scr: Preston Sturges
The Little Foxes
d: William Wyler; scr: Lillian Hellman
Manpower
d: Raoul Walsh; scr: Richard Macauley, Jerry Wald
The Sea Wolf
d: Michael Curtiz; scr: Robert Rossen
 

Sara Allgood, Roddy McDowall in How Green Was My Valley
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La Fille du puisatier / The Well-Digger’s Daughter
d, scr: Marcel Pagnol
How Green Was My Valley
d: John Ford; scr: Philip Dunne
Meet John Doe
d: [...]

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 [...]

THE LETTER – Jeanne Eagels

The Letter (1929)
Direction: Jean de Limur
Screenplay: Garrett Fort, from W. Somerset Maugham’s 1927 play
Cast: Jeanne Eagels, O. P. Heggie, Reginald Owen, Herbert Marshall, Irene Browne, Lady Tsen Mei, Tamaki Yoshiwara

 
Having seen William Wyler’s masterful 1940 adaptation of Somerset Maugham’s The Letter and having read quite a bit about Broadway star Jeanne Eagels‘ remarkable talent, I was expecting to find at least a modicum of quality in Jean de Limur’s 1929 version of the tale. I was greatly disappointed even though the plot is basically the same as the one found in the Wyler version:
Stuck on a Malayan rubber plantation with her aloof older husband (Reginald Owen), British subject Leslie Crosbie (Eagels) finds affection in the person of [...]