Set at a Catholic boarding school for boys in Vichy France, Louis Malle’s Holocaust-themed coming-of-age drama Au Revoir les Enfants is possibly his best.
Pedro Almodóvar’s brazenly subversive ‘gay film noir’ Bad Education is one of the most daring exemplars of the genre. Gael García Bernal stars.
Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe joined forces on the problem-plagued The Misfits. See also: The playwright’s answer to On the Waterfront.
Author Anthony Slide discusses the frenzied and once hugely popular British comedian Arthur Askey, who has finally become the subject of a full-fledged biography.
Barbara Stanwyck: Known as a “consummate professional,” Stanwyck never took home a competitive Oscar even though, over the course of her 35-year film career, she delivered many of the most…
Playwright Arthur Miller vs. Red Scare Hysteria: The Crucible Demythologizes American Exceptionalism
Playwright Arthur Miller vs. Red Scare paranoia: The Crucible and the Salem witch hunts demythologize the concept of ‘American exceptionalism.’
Little Fugitive director Morris Engel was the post-WWII ‘Father of American Independent Cinema,’ inspiring John Cassavetes and the French New Wave.
Best remembered for playing the creepy Omni chairman in RoboCop, Dan O’Herlihy was a one-of-a-kind Best Actor Oscar nominee during the studio era.
Ruth Warrick: In show business for nearly seven decades, actress Ruth Warrick is best remembered for two disparate roles: Charles Foster Kane’s genteel wife in Orson Welles’ 1941 classic Citizen…
Virginia Mayo: The honey-blonde – at times red-haired – heroine of Technicolor fare like Wonder Man, The Flame and the Arrow, and Painting the Clouds with Sunshine, Virginia Mayo was…
In the hits A Summer Place and Imitation of LIfe, actress Sandra Dee embodied the wholesome but tormented ‘all-American Girl.’
In many of her films, actress Carol Lynley (The Cardinal, etc. ) played ravishing girl-next-door types who were willing and able to break social conventions.
The Poseidon Adventure actress Carol Lynley starred in landmark teen pregnancy drama Blue Denim + thriller Bunny Lake Is Missing.
As an RKO and MGM star, sassy blonde Ann Sothern had an unconventional professional trajectory: A and B movies in a decades-long film career that had no less than 2 peaks.
Ava Gardner The Barefoot Contessa: 1950s Hollywood star’s underrated mix of glamour and charisma in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s ‘best bad movie.’
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…
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 Llewelyn Davies dressed up as Peter Pan. J.M. Barrie’s favorite Llewelyn Davies boy, Michael was the most important source of inspiration for Peter Pan, “the boy who wouldn’t grow…
Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie. Marc Forster’s Finding Neverland ends on a sentimental note: Barrie (Johnny Depp) reminds the orphaned Peter (Freddie Highmore) that the power of imagination can be…
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…
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…
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…
Howard Keel MGM musicals: Texas Carnival publicity shot with Esther Williams. In his MGM musicals of the 1950s, Howard Keel was almost always paired with small, girl-like leading ladies –…
Howard Keel musicals at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer: Box office roller-coaster ride. Brought to Hollywood in 1948 to star in MGM’s then popular musicals, stage performer Howard Keel seemed poised to reach major…
Howard Keel publicity shot ca. 1950. A prominent name in Hollywood musicals in the first half of the 1950s, Howard Keel was seen – and heard – as baritone-voiced, larger-than-life…
Legendary Broadway actor John Barrymore also enjoyed an impressive, rewarding and enduring - yet vastly undervalued - movie career in the 1920s and 1930s.
Arthur Miller movies: Visions of the shattered American Dream in the ‘subversive’ family dramas All My Sons and Death of a Salesman.
Frank and Ava movie stars Rico Simonini as Frank Sinatra and Emily Elicia Low as Ava Gardner: The explosive real-life relationship between the two temperamental Hollywood stars is the focus…
Actress Ann Sothern enjoyed an unusual second career peak that included a double Academy Award winner. Decades later, ‘Maisie’ became 1 of oldest Oscar nominees.
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…
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…
Howard Keel at the height of his career in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, with Jane Powell. In his autobiography, Only Make Believe: My Life in Show Business, Howard Keel…