This post is an entry in the Classic Movie Blog Association’s “Classic Movies of 1939” Blogathon, organized by Becky of ClassicBecky’s Brain Food and Page of My Love of Old Hollywood. To see entries from other members, visit the CMBA blog. Indulge a flight of fancy for a moment, but I sometimes wonder if, on…
By the late 1980s, it seems that the studio Mickey Mouse built had reached a crossroads. The Walt Disney animation legacy was in danger of being shuttered forever after a series of critical and commercial flops, while simultaneously undergoing an upheaval in its animation department as the revered “Nine Old Men” retired and were gradually…
Yup … for two weeks in a row, the Saturday Morning Cartoons post title is a villain quote. Oliver & Company (1988) is Disney’s animated and “animaled” take on Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (if you must indulge in the Dickens canon, this is probably the way to go). Oliver the abandoned kitten meets Dodger,…
As I mentioned yesterday, today’s Therapy Thursday post will showcase Suddenly, Last Summer, with Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor. Oddly, I haven’t been able to come up with a good topic for this series in weeks upon weeks … I just had nothing. Then, yesterday, doing a brief tribute to Elizabeth Taylor, this movie came to…
Note: you can find the first part of this entry here. Joseph Breen’s second caveat in adapting Streetcar revolved around the character of Blanche, whose more sexually predatory side could not be fully explicated on the screen per Production Code regulations. The faded Southern belle’s lack of sexual satisfaction in her marriage and her guilt over Allan’s suicide…
We’ve previously touched on issues of censorship here at True Classics, but our next two entries this week will take a more in-depth look at the Hays Code, particularly in regards to the struggle to adapt the controversial source material of A Streetcar Named Desire for the big screen. By 1950, Hollywood had reached an impasse. For nearly twenty…
The Disney track record for adapting classic works of literature continued with the release of The Jungle Book in 1967. Based on the tales of British writer Rudyard Kipling, the movie is perhaps most notable as the last film to be produced by Walt Disney, as he passed away before it was completed. The film tells…
I ran into this one on TCM on Saturday quite by accident. I thought immediately of the short story “Weep No More, My Lady” and had to do a little research. The author, James H. Street, wrote the short story, which he then expanded into the 1954 novel Good-bye, My Lady. It’s about an orphaned…
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