Howard Keel musicals: Box office ups and downs emblematic of genre’s erratic appeal in 1950s Hollywood as a result of dramatic socio-economic changes.
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Magnificent Obsession Book: Movie fans’ outrageous history from Hollywood screenwriters + gay porn actors to coal miner’s sons + D.W. Griffith players.
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Ernst Lubitsch movies’ subtle touch now passé in our age of sledgehammer filmmaking but The Student Prince and The Merry Widow still delight.
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Evolution of Movie Sound Technology: Interview with Film Preservationist Robert Gitt plus Douglas Shearer (Norma’s brother) and his 7 Oscars.
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The Merry Widow with Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier. The Merry Widow is neither one of Ernst Lubitsch’s most discussed nor best-liked films. Film critics and historians generally tend to…
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Meet Me in St. Louis with Margaret O’Brien, Judy Garland Hugh Martin, best known for co-composing with Ralph Blane “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” sung by Judy Garland in…
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Spencer Tracy in San Francisco with Jeanette MacDonald. Spencer Tracy is the star of the evening on Turner Classic Movies. My two major recommendations are W. S. Van Dyke’s San…
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Jeanette MacDonald, Ramon Novarro, The Cat and the Fiddle Beyond Paradise: The Life of Ramon Novarro is a film star biography I wrote several years ago. The book tells the…
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Movie couples: The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex with Olivia de Havilland and Errol Flynn. In Leading Couples: The Most Unforgettable Screen Romances of the Studio Era (Chronicle Books,…
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A complete retrospective of Hollywood director Rouben Mamoulian (1897–1987), one of cinema’s greatest stylists and innovators, will run at New York City’s Film Forum from Friday, Sept. 7, through Tuesday,…
Marta Eggerth ca. 1935: Central Europe’s Jeanette MacDonald. Operetta and film star Marta Eggerth dead at 101: The Jeanette MacDonald of Central European cinema Marta Eggerth, an international star in…
Jeanette MacDonald in Naughty Marietta. Deborah Kerr, Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Gail Russell, John Wayne, Donna Reed, Jeanette MacDonald, Emil Jannings, Jacques Tati, Nelson Eddy, Anthony Quinn, John Wayne, and…
Early talkies on TCM: Rudy Vallee in The Vagabond Lover + Tanned Legs & Spring Is Here In the U.S., Turner Classic Movies will be showing three early talkies: The…