Ann Sothern: Actress in Maisie movie series enjoyed two Hollywood career peaks. Ann Sothern, an actress in Hollywood and, somewhat briefly, on Broadway since the late 1920s, became a star in 1939, courtesy of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s Edwin L. Marin-directed low-budget comedy…

Ann Sothern. Although never a superstar, Ann Sothern was billed above the title in a series of comedies, musicals, and dramas of the 1940s and early 1950s, mostly at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Today perhaps chiefly associated with MGM’s Maisie comedy series (1939–1947),…

Ava Gardner: The Barefoot Contessa, Mogambo, and Earthquake actress, and an Ernest Hemingway antiheroine in The Killers, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, and The Sun Also Rises. In Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s The Barefoot Contessa, Ava Gardner discovers that the life of…

Jimmy Stewart. ‘Jimmy’ Stewart: Unlikely Hollywood star enjoyed decades-long movie career in a variety of genres The personification of all-American aw-shucksiness – of the sort you find only in bad movies and bad literature – James Stewart, fondly remembered by…

Lena Horne. Lena Horne movies: Velvety-voiced singer generally relegated to specialty numbers during heyday of the Hollywood musical Had things been different, it’s anybody’s guess whether or not three-time Grammy winner Lena Horne, Turner Classic Movies’ “Summer Under the Stars”…

Melvyn Douglas. Melvyn Douglas: From suave leading man to Hollywood’s top female stars to first-rate dramatic actor Unlike Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn, or Gary Cooper, Melvyn Douglas couldn’t exactly be considered a handsome, matinee idol type. Unlike Edward G. Robinson,…

Hal Prince. Out of his record-setting 21 Tony Awards, eight were as Best Director of a Musical for the following: Cabaret (at the 1967 ceremony), Company (1971), Follies (1972, with Michael Bennett), Candide (1974), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of…

Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie. Directed by Marc Forster and adapted by David Magee from Allan Knee’s play The Man Who Was Peter Pan, the Miramax-distributed 2004 period drama Finding Neverland features a sentimental, bittersweet ending, as fatherly author and…

Author Allan R. Ellenberger discusses Miriam Hopkins in the interview further below – and in his Hopkins biography Life and Films of a Hollywood Rebel. From pre-Code antiheroine to matronly supporting player, Hopkins stole scenes and/or movies from the likes…

Howard Keel in Dallas with Donna Reed: late 20th-century mainstream resurgence of two former Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer stars. On Season 8 (1984–1985) of CBS’s hit TV soap Dallas (1978–1991), 1950s MGM contract actor-singer Howard Keel, previously a “guest star” on the show,…

The Music Man with Robert Preston and Shirley Jones: Independence Day movies. Numerous Hollywood musicals have attempted to capture that elusive, reality-averse quality known as “Americana-ness” – e.g., Yankee Doodle Dandy, Meet Me in St. Louis, In the Good Old…

John Paul Jones with Robert Stack: 4th of July movies. Although every sign indicates that 2019 is the new 1984, those in the U.S. shouldn’t fret: TCM’s 4th of July movies will transport viewers to the distant past, when there…