Between mystery illnesses and miscellaneous bothers, it’s been a crazy couple of weeks, but hopefully we can get back into the swing of things this week. Another 31 Days of Oscar celebration has come and gone, and my resolution to post a recommendation a day kind of fell apart there in the middle, didn’t it?…
Adam’s Rib (1949) March 3rd, 11:30AM EST Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy starred in nine films together, some of them quite good (1942’s Woman of the Year, incidentally their first on-screen pairing), some quite forgettable (the same year’s Keeper of the Flame, anyone?), and still others slightly overrated (1967’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, incidentally…
The Maltese Falcon (1941) Airing March 2nd, 9:30AM EST If you have never seen this movie, you have deprived yourself of something truly spectacular. You should fix that. Immediately. The granddaddy of film noir–the biggest and best of them all–The Maltese Falcon is one of those landmark films which ushered in an entirely new genre…
It has been a very busy two weeks around these parts, and my attention to my beloved classics has fallen by the wayside (though blogging itself has not; I’ve been helping with a blogging project for my alma mater’s historic alumnae association, and you can see the fruits of that labor here). Can I just…
Life has interrupted for the time being, so daily “31 Days of Oscar” recommendations are slowing down for the moment. But I must take a little time to remember the marvelous Kathryn Grayson, who passed away today at the age of 88. The lovely and tremendously gifted Grayson may be best remembered as the temperamental…
The African Queen Airing 10PM EST When you combine arguably the best actor and the best actress that filmdom has ever seen in one movie, you’ve got, arguably, one of the best movies of all time. While The African Queen is not my favorite film in the repertoire of its stars, Humphrey Bogart and Katharine…
The incomparable Barbara Stanwyck meets her match in a group of nerdy professors in 1941’s hysterical Ball of Fire, a film generally recognized as one of the last screwball comedies to come out of the so-called “Golden Age” of the genre. A burlesque performer with the … unique name of Sugarpuss O’Shea (Stanwyck) is approached…
The More the Merrier (1943) and The Devil and Miss Jones (1941) Airing noon and 2PM EST Jean Arthur has always been one of my favorite actresses. To look at her–and to listen to her–you might wonder how on earth this woman managed to succeed in Hollywood. She’s lovely to look at, true, but at…
True Classics 