Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter has apparently long stymied filmmakers, because there has yet to be a cinematic version that fully adapts the material without changing the tone or intent of the author’s original novel. Not to be overly sarcastic about it or anything. It’s a damn shame, too, because Letter is truly a masterwork of American…
In the wake of the glorious success of last month’s nationwide theater screenings of Singin’ in the Rain (1952), NCM Fathom, Turner Classic Movies, and Warner Bros. have teamed up once again to bring the movie back to theaters for an encore–and on the eve of star Gene Kelly’s 100th birthday, no less! From the press…
Biff Grimes (James Cagney) is an ex-con living in turn-of-the-century New York City who has not found much success in his post-prison career as a dentist. One Sunday afternoon, while preparing to go for a walk with his wife, Amy (Olivia de Havilland), Biff gets a call from the president of the local bank: one…
Today, it just feels appropriate to borrow a quote from one of the funniest screenwriters of all time, the great Preston Sturges. His 1941 opus Sullivan’s Travels, from which the title of this post derives, remains one of the best comedies of all time–incisive, witty, keenly observational, and filled with moments of rolling-on-the-floor hilarity. We…
“It’s a conspiracy, I tell you. The minute you start, they put you on the all-American sucker list. You start out to build a home and wind up in the poorhouse. And if it can happen to me, what about the guys who aren’t making $15,000 a year? The ones who want a home of…
As recounted in Stefan Kanfer’s fantastic history of animation, Serious Business (1997), early in 1933, Walt Disney gave a personal tour of the Disney animation studio to movie star Mary Pickford. Disney was considering making a live-action version of Alice in Wonderland with Pickford in the title role, and in fact shot some test footage of the actress…
Letty Strong (Loretta Young) is a single mother, having given birth to her son, Mickey (Jackie Kelk), in the back room of a bookstore at the age of fifteen. She and her son were thereafter taken in by “Fuzzy” (Henry Travers), the owner of the store, who views the pair as his own. Letty…
Blogathons, blogathons, blogathons! It seems like every classic movie blog on the web is hosting one in the next couple of months. And that is not a complaint–it’s fantastic to see the interest in classic films that such blogathons tend to generate and promote among movie fans. We told you about several upcoming events in our…
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