In 1931, William Powell accepted a contract from Warner Bros. and entered a new phase in his burgeoning career. It was, at least at first, a solid move for the star. He had made his film debut almost a decade earlier at Samuel Goldwyn’s eponymous studio, in a small supporting role in 1922’s Sherlock Holmes, and toiled…
When I was given the chance to review Warner Archive’s new manufacture-on-demand release of Parachute Jumper (1933), I was so excited: it was a Bette Davis film that I had never seen. No more than ten minutes into the film, however, I realized why I had never heard of it before. The dialogue and plot is…
Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton) has a slight problem. Our unlikely-named heroine is a young, pretty, slightly empty-headed girl, and all the handsome young men are headed off to war. They invite her to a dance; she accepts. But her stern father, the town constable (William Demarest), forbids her to go. Undeterred, Trudy calls up her…
When considering the greatest love affairs in the history of Hollywood, the smoldering pairing of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall would have to rank near the top of the list. Though Bogart was twenty-six years older than the fledgling starlet Bacall (whom he nicknamed “Baby”), their relationship lasted a passionate and loving thirteen years, until…
No film director in history had quite as deft a hand in crafting wild, outrageous comedy as Preston Sturges. The director also wrote and produced his own screenplays, in addition to dabbling in acting, songwriting, and playwriting, among other varied interests. A prototypical “Renaissance man,” Sturges brought a wide-ranging knowledge to his films, reflected in…
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