The Swan Articles

Ramon Novarro, Norma Shearer in Ernst Lubitsch's The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg As a William & Kate tie-in, Turner Classic Movies is showing several royal weddings, romances, escapades, and heartbreaks this evening. Stanley Donen's Royal Wedding (1951), starring Jane Powell, Fred Astaire, and Peter Lawford, is just about over. The best thing about the film is Fred Astaire dancing on walls and ceilings, a [...]

Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra in High Society Turner Classic Movies' Grace Kelly series comes to a close with a screening of the actress' last three films: Alfred Hitchcock's comedy-adventure To Catch a Thief (1955), co-starring Cary Grant; Charles Walters' musical High Society (1956), a remake of The Philadelphia Story (1940) with Kelly as the woman between Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby; and Charles Vidor's romantic [...]

Grace Kelly on TCM: Part I Thanks to Kelly's Oscar win, The Country Girl is interesting as a historical curiosity — it's the sort of "gutsy" and "realistic" film adaptation of a respected stage play that was very popular among the filmgoing elite of the 1950s (e.g., Tea and Sympathy, A Hatful of Rain), but that I generally find both lame and artificial. Bing Crosby's [...]