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 Summertime, On Moonlight Bay, By…
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Joan Crawford in ‘Mildred Pierce’: Best Actress Oscar winner enjoyed a triumphant comeback. ‘Mildred Pierce’ 1945 movie review: Very entertaining ‘soap opera’ Time has a way of making some films seem grander than they really are. A good example is Mildred Pierce, the 1945 black-and-white…
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Olivia de Havilland. Labor relations’ history-making ‘Gone with the Wind’ star and two-time Best Actress Oscar winner Olivia de Havilland turns 99 Two-time Best Actress Academy Award winner Olivia de Havilland, the only surviving major Gone with the Wind cast member and oldest surviving Oscar…
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Movie extra jobs & other Hollywood Unknowns. Holywood Unknowns: A history of movie extras and bit players In Hollywood Unknowns (University Press of Mississippi), film historian Anthony Slide delves into a rarely discussed side of Hollywood moviemaking: the aspirations and travails of those invariably nameless,…
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Casablanca with Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart. About three years ago, I finally gave in to watch Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) for the first time. I had hesitated because of the five- and ten-minute snippets of the film I had seen, and…
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Lauren Bacall. Lauren Bacall, hardly a top box office attraction in the 1940s or 1950s, but a major “Old Hollywood” star today, will have her Turner Classic Movies “Summer Under the Stars” day on Wed., Aug. 25. Bacall is so prestigious nowadays that she even…
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Double Indemnity 1944. Double Indemnity (1944), Billy Wilder’s quintessential film noir starring Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray (right), and Edward G. Robinson, will be screened as the next feature in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ series “Oscar Noir: 1940s Writing Nominees from Hollywood’s…
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Noah’s Ark with George O’Brien, Guinn ‘Big Boy’ Williams, and Paul McAllister. Of all the films from that magical moment when silent movies merged into sound, nothing is as effective as Michael Curtiz’s Noah’s Ark: it has a romantic story, splashy scenes, and plenty of…
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The Adventures of Robin Hood 1938: Errol Flynn at his most dashing in Michael Curtiz and William Keighley’s rousing Technicolor classic. A Warner Bros. digital restoration of the 1938 rousing adventure classic The Adventures of Robin Hood will be screened on Sunday, June 1, at…