To Sir, with Love (1967) is probably my favorite Sidney Poitier movie. What’s not to love about Sidney Poitier? He’s credited with opening up the world of film for African-Americans by expanding the nature of their roles. Of all of his memorable characters, Mr. Thackeray is my favorite. He steps in as an instructor at…
Today, it just feels appropriate to borrow a quote from one of the funniest screenwriters of all time, the great Preston Sturges. His 1941 opus Sullivan’s Travels, from which the title of this post derives, remains one of the best comedies of all time–incisive, witty, keenly observational, and filled with moments of rolling-on-the-floor hilarity. We…
The legendary blonde bombshell, Marilyn Monroe, has for some time been a mystery to me. The handful of movies that I’ve seen of hers have left me unimpressed. While unarguably beautiful, she always seems to play an unintelligent, gold-digger type, which is unappealing to me (personally, I’ve always been more of a Katharine Hepburn fan: I…
“It’s a conspiracy, I tell you. The minute you start, they put you on the all-American sucker list. You start out to build a home and wind up in the poorhouse. And if it can happen to me, what about the guys who aren’t making $15,000 a year? The ones who want a home of…
McLintock! (1963) is my favorite John Wayne movie. Not being a big fan of Westerns in general, this hardly may be great praise, but perhaps it is. It is on my short list of “westerns worth watching.” I love the humor, the banter, and the playfulness of this movie. My grandmother loved Westerns, and she…
As recounted in Stefan Kanfer’s fantastic history of animation, Serious Business (1997), early in 1933, Walt Disney gave a personal tour of the Disney animation studio to movie star Mary Pickford. Disney was considering making a live-action version of Alice in Wonderland with Pickford in the title role, and in fact shot some test footage of the actress…
Letty Strong (Loretta Young) is a single mother, having given birth to her son, Mickey (Jackie Kelk), in the back room of a bookstore at the age of fifteen. She and her son were thereafter taken in by “Fuzzy” (Henry Travers), the owner of the store, who views the pair as his own. Letty…
Before High Anxiety, Mel Brooks starred in and directed Silent Movie (1976). The ultimate silent movie, it’s a silent film about creating a silent film. Aided by his two loyal associates, Dom Bell (Dom DeLuise) and Marty Eggs (Marty Feldman), Mel Funn (Mel Brooks) takes a silent film script to Hollywood, where he was once revered.…
True Classics 