Sometimes, a film comes along that seems to think of itself as far cleverer than it may actually be. I find this to be particularly true when considering some of the more popular films to come out of the past decade; ever since 90s hits like The Usual Suspects (1995) and The Sixth Sense (1999) delighted many viewers…
“Butch,” the loyal valet of playboy shipping heir Jonathan Blair, enters his employer’s bathroom one morning, chattering away about the bright, beautiful day. He asks Jonathan what he would like to wear, only to have the shower door fly open as a shower-capped Valentine Ransome pokes her head out and asks for a bath towel.…
At last count (as in, I just counted five minutes ago), I have twenty-two unwatched films on the DVR, all of which I have recorded from TCM over the past two months. And though it wasn’t by design, I realized recently that five of these movies feature Barbara Stanwyck. To top that off, I also…
“I wasn’t naked. I was completely covered by a blue spotlight.” –Gypsy Rose Lee The roots of modern theatrical burlesque can be found as early as the mid-nineteenth century, emerging first in the deceptively-straitlaced Victorian period in England, and then traveling across the Atlantic to American shores not long after. The concept of burlesque did…
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…
One of the sheer joys of watching a classic film is the opportunity to catch a glimpse of how people lived in generations long before your own. In particular, I always find it fascinating to see how people used to dress during different periods in time. And I can’t tell you how many times I…
My raging cinematic love affair with Humphrey Bogart does not blind me to the fact that, like most actors, he sometimes chose the wrong part (or had the wrong part chosen for him by short-sighted studio honchos). This is most obvious, perhaps, in 1947’s The Two Mrs. Carrolls, costarring Barbara Stanwyck (another personal favorite), Alexis…
I was asked recently to give a brief overview of the Hays Code, to which I have referred repeatedly in some of my previous entries on this blog. The Motion Picture Production Code, known in Hollywood as the Hays Code (named after its creator, Will H. Hays), preceded the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)…
True Classics 