Giacomo Puccini’s 1896 Italian opera La bohème has seen many forms in the century since its first performance in Turin. The story–itself borrowed from Henri Murger’s 1851 collection Scènes de la vie de bohème–has been retold in many forms, with and without the music. It’s been made into films, produced in countless venues featuring storied performers like…
Two decades after burning up the screen with Jean Harlow in Red Dust (1932), Clark Gable returned to the material that had made him one of the preeminent leading men of the 1930s when he starred in Mogambo (1953). This time around, the action–shot on location and brought to life in splendid Technicolor–was moved from Indochina to…
Maria (Olivia de Havilland) is a princess of a small, unnamed European country that has been overtaken by the Nazis. As the war rages on, she and her uncle, Holman (Charles Coburn), have settled into a posh New York apartment, where Maria spends her days reading in relative solitude. Though Holman pressures her to marry…
Sandra Kovak (Mary Astor) is a world-class pianist, playing to adoring fans all over the world. On an impulse (and in a drunken haze), she marries Peter Van Allen (George Brent), not realizing that her divorce from her previous husband was not yet valid. Peter is secretly relieved that the marriage to the demanding Sandra…
With all of the posts we do here at True Classics, I had honestly never thought about doing a post about Natalie Wood. I have no idea why, but I haven’t. Today, TCM’s Summer Under the Stars will be featuring twenty-four hours of her films, and suddenly it makes sense for me to offer some…
Several years ago, I was flipping through the TCM listings for films to record and came across The Valley of Decision (1945), with a star-studded cast featuring Greer Garson and Gregory Peck, and decided to give it a shot. I am so glad I did. The film opens in 1873 as Mary Rafferty (Garson), Irish immigrant…
“I’ve never taken orders from anyone. As long as I live, I’ll never take orders from anyone. I’m young and strong and nothing can touch me.” Dark Victory (1939) is a prime example of the power of a Bette Davis performance. Playing the part of terminally-ill heiress Judith Traherne, Davis commands full attention when onscreen, capable…
You know how sometimes you read something, and then something tangentially related to what you’ve only recently finished reading pops up somewhere, and you think, “My, that’s an odd coincidence?” That was the feeling I had earlier when I caught sight of an LA Times article entitled, “Long-lost early Orson Welles film ‘Too Much Johnson’ recovered.” A…
