Charles (Clifton Webb) and Arthur (Edmund Gwenn) are an unlikely-named pair of angels who are sent down to earth to fetch a young soul named Item (Gigi Perreau). Item has been hanging around the home of the Boltons, Jeff (Robert Cummings) and Lydia (Joan Bennett), for seven years, waiting to be born. But the show-biz…
History will remember him as a wise country sheriff and a charming country lawyer. But as wonderful as he was filling those roles, Andy Griffith was so much more than that. Before he passed away this morning, Griffith built a six-decade career on the persona of a good ol’ country boy sharing down-home wit and…
Another month has come and gone–a good month, all things considered (despite the drama that went down in the middle of June concerning a self-important, unnamed movie blog organization … bygones). And we have even more good stuff on tap for July! First, if you visit the site regularly, you may have noticed a change…
Her name may not be well-known to modern audiences, but her face is immediately recognizable to classic film fans. Throughout the 1930s and 40s, actress Helen Broderick appeared as the wisecracking pal of numerous Hollywood stars, always bringing a shot of well-timed droll humor to every role. In many ways, Broderick was the prototype for the…
Early in the 1941 film The Little Foxes, there is a brief, exquisitely-crafted scene that tells us everything we need to know about these characters. The Hubbard family, having just finished dinner with a wealthy guest and potential business partner, has gathered in the parlor for a musical performance. But this is no pleasant interlude; the…
Lord knows, I love me some Disney. I feel the need to state this upfront just to underscore how much I enjoy the Disney animated canon. I grew up with those films, watching them over and over again, singing the songs, pretending to be a princess (or one of the dancing ostriches from 1940’s Fantasia–I loved…
With the publication of his 1994 biography of Barbara Stanwyck, Axel Madsen infuriated a legion of the actress’ fans by claiming that Stanwyck had been bisexual, as evidenced–he says–by a lifelong friendship with her publicist, Helen Ferguson. Indeed, Madsen provides little evidence for his speculation; he admits that there is no proof of Stanwyck’s supposed…
Betty Furness began her career as a movie starlet and ended it as an influential expert in consumer issues and a reporter for The Today Show. The story of how she got there is an interesting one, to say the least, marked by Furness’ self-professed inability to say “no” to any job that crossed her path.…
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