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Judy Garland‘s most iconic role is Dorothy Gale in “The Wizard of Oz” (1939), and her most acclaimed is Esther Blodgett/Vicky Lester in “A Star Is Born” (1954). But this Judy fan of more than 40 years picks “Meet Me in St. Louis” as her favorite. Beautifully filmed in Technicolor, with one of Garland’s best soundtracks, as well as a film that changed the actress’s life in many ways, the Vincente Minnelli-directed Christmas musical film debuted eight decades ago on Nov. 22, 1944, in St. Louis, and had its New York premiere on Nov. 28. Read on for more about the “Meet Me in St. Louis” 80th anniversary.

Based on a series of stories by Sally Benson, “Meet Me in St. Louis” depicts a year in the life of the Smith family through a series of vignettes, from the summer of 1903 until the spring of the following year, culminating at the 1904 World’s Fair in St.

Close Encounter

The 68th BFI London Film Festival has unveiled additional titles for its 2024 program. The new slate includes one world premiere, one international premiere, one European premiere, and four U.K. premieres.

Charlie McDowell’s “The Summer Book,” starring Glenn Close, Emily Matthews and Anders Danielsen Lie, will have its world premiere as a special presentation. The film adapts Tove Jansson’s novel about a family’s summer on a Finnish island.

Justin Kurzel’s documentary “Ellis Park,” focusing on musician Warren Ellis, is set for its international premiere. The European premiere goes to Fleur Fortuné’s sci-fi feature debut “The Assessment,” with Elizabeth Olsen, Alicia Vikander and Himesh Patel.

U.K. premieres include Joshua Oppenheimer’s post-apocalyptic drama “The End,” featuring Tilda Swinton, George MacKay, Moses Ingram and Michael Shannon; Marco Dutra’s genre-bending “Bury Your Dead,” starring Selton Mello, Marjorie Estiano and Danilo Grangheia; Giovanni Tortorici’s coming-of-age tale “Dicianovve,...

Randal Malone, an actor and president of The Southern California Motion Picture Council, died July 28 of kidney disease at Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Los Angeles. He was 66.

His death was confirmed by H.H. Dr. Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe, a longtime friend and advisory board member of the Scmpc.

Malone played a “film star” on the 1990s MTV dating game show Singled Out and was in several low-budget films.

Born on May 29, 1958 in Kentucky, Malone toured with theater companies after graduating college, including stints on Broadway, before settling in Los Angeles in the late 1980s.

While being the caregiver for his ailing grandmother, Malone dedicated his time and resources to the Motion Picture and TV Fund and worked closely with the late “Mayor of Hollywood,” Johnny Grant, to secure stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Malone’s first film role was in Sunset After Dark, co-starring Oscar winner Margaret O’Brien and Anita Page.

Randal Malone, who showed up in dozens of low-budget movies and played a “film star” on the 1990s MTV dating game show Singled Out, has died. He was 66.

Malone died Sunday at Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys after a long battle with kidney disease, his family announced.

Since 2004, Malone served as president of the Southern California Motion Picture Council, a charitable organization that was founded in 1936 and remains one of the longest-running groups of its kind.

While signing autographs to promote Sunset After Dark (1996), in which he appeared alongside former child star Margaret O’Brien and onetime silent-film star Anita Page, Malone was spotted by producer Keven Undergaro.

He was then hired for Singled Out, which counted among its hosts Chris Hardwick, Jenny McCarthy and Carmen Electra. He portrayed various characters during the show’s three seasons, including “Film Star Randal Malone”; he wore gloves and used a cigarette holder...

Darryl Hickman, who appeared in such films as The Grapes of Wrath and Leave Her to Heaven as a youngster before becoming a CBS executive in charge of daytime drama and an actor once more, has died. He was 92.

Hickman, who lived in Montecito, died Wednesday, his family announced.

He was the older brother (by three years) of the late Dwayne Hickman, who starred on the 1959-63 CBS comedy The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Darryl appeared with his brother in Captain Eddie (1945) — he played famed fighter pilot Eddie Rickenbacker as a boy — and on three first-season episodes of Dobie as older brother Davey, who came home from college.

In 1951, after appearances in more than 40 movies, Hickman — who had been a contract player at Paramount and MGM — became disillusioned with the business and entered a monastery, though he was back in show business before long.

Hickman had made his first...

The preview opening of the new exhibit Meet the Stars: 100 Years of MGM Studios and the Golden Age of Hollywood on Thursday night was a crowded, buzzing affair. Held at the Hollywood Heritage Museum in the historic Lasky DeMille Barn across from the Hollywood Bowl, the event showcased the items of over 20 movie collectors. Memorabilia hunters, dressed in fedoras and flirty ’40s dresses, gabbed about their latest finds with others who have a similar passion.

The highlight of the night was when the crowd sang “Happy Birthday” to former MGM child star Cora Sue Collins (who played a little Greta Garbo in 1933’s Queen Christina), the last surviving MGM contract player from the 1930s. Sitting at a tableau that recreated a party thrown for her by MGM in 1935, Collins elegantly thanked everyone for their well wishes. Actor George Chakiris was also in attendance, and he posed next to a costume...

Exclusive: Elizabeth Taylor’s son will be interviewed on TV for the first time about his mother in the upcoming Kim Kardashian-produced doc about one of Hollywood’s ultimate leading ladies.

Kari Lia, one of the EPs behind Passion Pictures’ Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar [working title] for the BBC, revealed to Deadline that Chris Wilding, Taylor’s son with her second husband Michael Wilding, will speak after many decades.

Former film editor Wilding will feature in the upcoming doc series alongside Todd Fisher, Carrie Fisher’s brother, and Aileen Getty, Taylor’s daughter-in-law who campaigned alongside her to help those with HIV/Aids. The new interviewees will contribute alongside the likes of Kardashian, Joan Collins and Margaret O’Brien, all of whom knew Taylor personally.

Lia said Wilding had been “shy” in the past to discuss his mother’s legacy but, as what would have been her 92nd birthday approaches, he felt...

A documentary series about Elizabeth Taylor is in the works at the BBC, with Kim Kardashian among the producers.

Elizabeth Taylor is undoubtedly one of the most iconic film stars of her era. By the mid 1960s, she was the highest paid film star in the world.

There have been copious books written and films made about the star too – Taylor has been portrayed by Helena Bonham Carter, Lindsay Lohan, Sherilyn Fenn and Louella Parsons among others; a biopic called A Special Relationship starring Rachel Weisz and written by Simon Beaufoy was announced in 2019, but there has been no news since then.

Now though, the BBC has commissioned a three part documentary, Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar, which will be executive produced by Kim Kardashian, Kari Lia and Hamish Fergusson.

The description of the documentary reads as follows:

The series will take a deep dive into Taylor’s craft and technique...

Kim Kardashian is contributing to a major project about the life and legacy of Elizabeth Taylor.

BBC Arts has commissioned Passion Pictures to make a three-part documentary series on the late icon, executive produced by and featuring the Kardashians reality TV star and mogul.

The working title is Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar, and will explore “one of Hollywood’s most famous names,” via THR.

Keep reading to find out more…

The series promises to feature “privileged access to those who knew her best, including members of Elizabeth Taylor’s family, friends, and colleagues from throughout her stellar career,” highlighting “a superstar who transformed not just Hollywood but fame itself, as she went from child star to highest-paid actress in the world.”

“For too long the story of Elizabeth Taylor has been told as a soap opera. The eight marriages, the diamonds, the addictions. This series gives Elizabeth Taylor the significance she richly deserves,...

Kim Kardashian will produce and star in an Elizabeth Taylor Documentary for the BBC. The Keeping Up with the Kardashians star, a longtime fan of the legendary actor, calls the Oscar-winning superstar “unapologetically herself, a fighter” as Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar dives into the backstory of one of Hollywood’s most famous names.

Kim Kardashian calls Elizabeth Taylor ‘a fighter’

The Skims founder will executive produce Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar alongside Kari Lia and Hamish Fergusson. The BBC reports the series promises to feature “privileged access to those who knew her best, including members of Elizabeth Taylor’s family, friends, and colleagues from throughout her stellar career.”

“Elizabeth Taylor was unapologetically herself, a fighter,” Kim Kardashian said in a statement. “She is proof that you can keep evolving and changing and have different chapters in your life. And she paved the way for all of us who came after her with that blueprint.

Kim Kardashian is set to both executive produce and feature in an upcoming docuseries about Elizabeth Taylor.

Commissioned by the BBC, the three-part documentary — given the working title “Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar” — is coming from the Oscar-winning “Searching for Sugar Man” production house Passion Pictures, behind the recent Sundance hit “Super/Man” about Christopher Reeve.

The series will take a deep dive into Taylor’s craft and technique as an actor — one who mesmerized cinema-goers, but also changed the relationship between audiences and stars — showing how she reinvented the nature of fame, even as she smashed the glass ceiling in Hollywood, before going on to become a billion-dollar businesswoman, activist and advocate. Fremantle will be shopping the doc series globally.

“Elizabeth Taylor was unapologetically herself, a fighter,” said Kardashian, who conducted the last interview with her before she died. “She is proof that you can keep evolving and changing and...

BBC Arts has commissioned Academy Award-winning production firm Passion Pictures (Searching for Sugar Man, Wham!) to make a three-part documentary series on Elizabeth Taylor, executive produced by and featuring Kim Kardashian.

The BBC unveiled the project with the working title Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar on Monday, noting that Taylor is “one of Hollywood’s most famous names.”

Executive produced by Kari Lia, Hamish Fergusson and Kardashian, the series promises to feature “privileged access to those who knew her best, including members of Elizabeth Taylor’s family, friends, and colleagues from throughout her stellar career.” And it vows to shine the spotlight on “a superstar who transformed not just Hollywood but fame itself, as she went from child star to highest-paid actress in the world.”

A show description also highlights: “For too long the story of Elizabeth Taylor has been told as a soap opera. The eight marriages, the diamonds, the addictions.

Kim Kardashian is producing and featuring in a documentary series about Elizabeth Taylor for the BBC.

Hot off the heels of its Superman Christopher Reeves doc being eyed by Warner Bros. Discovery at Sundance, Searching for Sugar Man producer Passion Pictures is behind Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar [working title], which is being shopped globally by Fremantle.

Kardashian is one of a range of high profile stars including Joan Collins and Margaret O’Brien who knew Taylor personally and will appear in the three-part box set series for BBC Two and iPlayer, while she is also an EP.

The series will reveal how one of Hollywood’s most well known stars created the blueprint for modern celebrity. It will will take a deep dive into Taylor’s craft and technique as an actor – one who mesmerized cinemagoers, but also changed the relationship between audiences and stars – while going on to spotlight her work becoming a billion-dollar businesswoman,...

Over Hollywood's history, directors have done all sorts of quirky and morally questionable things in an effort to get a certain performance out of their actors. Francis Ford Coppola screamed abuse at Winona Ryder off-camera during the making of "Bram Stoker's Dracula" and encouraged the other actors to do the same. Then there's everything that William Friedkin did to the cast of "The Exorcist," from slapping them before shouting "action!" to firing live guns to get a shocked expression. 

By comparison, "Meet Me in St. Louis" director Vincente Minnelli telling six-year-old actress Margaret O'Brien that her dog had died in order to make her cry for the 1944 musical "Meet Me in St. Louis" seems almost tame. Especially since it probably didn't actually happen (more on that in a moment). But that's the subject of a sketch on this week's episode of "Saturday Night Live," with guest host Kate McKinnon playing...

What’s so inspiring and energizing about Steven Spielberg is that he isn’t just one of the greatest filmmakers ever, he’s an eclectic cinephile who talks about his favorite films with the boyish enthusiasm of a fan.

So he was a natural fit, alongside Martin Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson, for the advisory panel that came together in June to support Turner Classic Movies. As part of that role, he’s recorded his first “Spielberg’s Picks” video, a recommendations list of his personal faves from the September 2023 TCM lineup. Watch the video above, an IndieWire exclusive, for not just his choices, but his incisive comments.

For his debut picks, he chose Vincente Minnelli’s “Meet Me in St. Louis” (1944), Douglas Sirk’s “Imitation of Life” (1959), Gordon Douglas’s “Them!” (1954), Minnelli’s “The Bad and the Beautiful” (1952), and Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Wrong Man” (1957). Scorsese and Anderson’s own picks are forthcoming,...

Every year, a lot of actors win awards on Oscar night, but the ones who most often win the evening are the young stars and starlets who get to walk the red carpet. Sometimes they even win Oscar gold too. With any luck, the young star of “The Florida Project” Brooklynn Prince will make a splash at this year’s ceremony, but here are some of the cutest kids of years’ past:

Jackie Cooper – “Skippy” (1930)

Jackie Cooper was nominated for Best Actor for his role in 1930’s “Skippy.” To date, he’s the youngest boy to ever be nominated in the Best Actor category. He lost to Lionel Barrymore, who thanked Cooper in his acceptance speech. But Cooper didn’t hear it: he fell asleep on Marie Dressler’s arm during the ceremony (which started after midnight) and no one wanted to wake him.

Shirley Temple – (1934)

Shirley Temple was the...

Everything is coming up Judy Garland this year because the beloved performer was born a century ago on June 10th. TCM is making Garland its “Star of the Month” and the Criterion Channel is offering its own retrospective. Warner Archive is releasing three of her films on Blu-Ray: 1941’s “Ziegfeld Girl”; 1942’s “For Me and My Gal” and 1945’s “The Clock.” There are many celebrations taking place around the country in honor of her centennial including at the Judy Garland Museum in her hometown of Grand Rapids, Minnesota and the Hollywood Forever Cemetery where Garland is now buried. And there’s even a new perfume — “Judy-a Garland Fragrance by Vincenzo Spinnato” — that will be unveiled at a birthday gala in Los Angeles.

I don’t know about you, but I converted to “Judy-ism” at the age of five when I first saw her beloved 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz” on TV.

The 40th anniversary screening of Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” at the upcoming TCM Film Festival will be a full-blown reunion.

The Turner Classic Movies Film Festival announced on Wednesday that actors Drew Barrymore and Henry Thomas are confirmed to appear alongside Spielberg and producer Kathleen Kennedy at the screening, which will be held on the opening night of the festival on April 21.

In keeping with this year’s festival theme “All Together Now: Back to the Big Screen,” director Michael Schultz and stars Glynn Turman, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Garrett Morris, and Steven Williams will introduce their seminal coming-of-age dramedy “Cooley High” (1975), about a group of teens in Chicago preparing for life after high school. In addition, stars Kevin Bacon, Paul Reiser, Steve Guttenberg and Tim Daly will celebrate the 40th anniversary of “Diner” (1982).

The festival runs from April 21 through April 24 in Hollywood, with TCM Primetime host Ben Mankiewicz...

“I can’t believe it. Right here where we live – right here in St. Louis.”

Nothing’s more fun than The Wildey’s Tuesday Night Film SeriesJudy Garland in Meet Me In St. Louis (1944) will be on the big screen when it plays at The Wildey Theater in Edwardsville, Il at 7:00pm Tuesday December 21st. Tickets are only $3 Tickets available starting at 3pm day of movie at Wildey Theatre ticket office. Cash or check only. Lobby opens at 6pm.

Screen legend Judy Garland stars in the nostalgic turn-of-the-20th-century story of the joys, dramas, lives and loves of the Smith family during one memorable year. Garland is the second-eldest daughter, Esther, and Margaret O’Brien is her youngest sister, Tootie. Their world is changing in ways both big and small as each season brings warm memories – as well as opportunities to sing such timeless favorites as “The Trolley Song,” “The Boy Next Door...

“Old Yeller.” “Home Alone.” “The Wizard of Oz.” Odds are, even you’ve never seen these films, certain images pop into your head when you hear the titles: a young boy with his faithful dog, a little scamp’s stunned reaction to slapping his cheeks with aftershave, a young girl in a gingham dress tapping her ruby slippers together. These are just a few of the child performers who have captured our hearts, bringing smiles to our lips or tears to our eyes, since the earliest days of cinema. Our new photo gallery features the 30 best child stars from decades of movies.

SEE20 young Oscar nominees aged 18 and under, including Jodie Foster, Anna Paquin, Hailee Steinfeld [Photos]

In the 1920s and 1930s, film shorts were commonly packaged with feature films, and kids were a big draw, most especially the “Our Gang” series that is still popular almost 100 years later. Jackie Cooper...

“Old Yeller.” “Home Alone.” “The Wizard of Oz.” Odds are, even you’ve never seen these films, certain images pop into your head when you hear the titles: a young boy with his faithful dog, a little scamp’s stunned reaction to slapping his cheeks with aftershave, a young girl in a gingham dress tapping her ruby slippers together. These are just a few of the child performers who have captured our hearts, bringing smiles to our lips or tears to our eyes, since the earliest days of cinema. Our new photo gallery features the 30 best child stars from decades of movies.

In the 1920s and 1930s, film shorts were commonly packaged with feature films, and kids were a big draw, most especially the “Our Gang” series that is still popular almost 100 years later. Jackie Cooper was one of those “little rascals,” and was also the first juvenile to have...

Wild Eye Releasing released B. Luciano Barsuglia’s Impact Event, an apocalyptic fun house horror flick, on DVD and VOD last week. In case you have not checked it out yet ScreenAnarchy has been given an exclusive clip to share with you this morning. Check it out below, along with the trailer and a selection of stills. From the award-winning director of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, and featuring horror icons Michael Berryman and Vernon Wells, prep for an Impact Event this April! After a meteor causes a global apocalypse, a small group of survivors takes refuge in an abandoned funhouse and must fight off cannibalistic killers. Starring Margaret O’Brien (Halloween...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

An apocalyptic meteor strike forces refugees to go up against cannibals in a funhouse in B. Luciano Barsuglia’s new movie Impact Event, and with the film now on DVD and VOD from Wild Eye Releasing, we've been provided with an exclusive clip for Daily Dead readers to enjoy.

Below, you can watch Michael Berryman discover the truth about deadly prisoners that may or may not still be in custody in our exclusive clip from Impact Event, and to learn more about the film, visit Amazon.

"From the award-winning director of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, and featuring horror icons Michael Berryman and Vernon Wells, prep for an Impact Event this April!

After a meteor causes a global apocalypse, a small group of survivors takes refuge in an abandoned funhouse and must fight off cannibalistic killers.

Starring Margaret O’Brien (Halloween Pussy Trap Kill! Kill!), Michael Berryman, Vernon Wells and Richard Grieco,...

Tomorrow, December 11, Fathom Events, TCM and Warner Bros. Pictures will present Meet Me in St. Louis returning to select theaters for a special 75th anniversary event. Judy Garland and Margaret O'Brien star in this heartwarming tale of a colorful early 20th century St. Louis family who learn their father has been transferred--and they will have to move away from the town and friends they love to New York.

“It’s our last dance in St. Louis. I feel like I’m going to cry!”

‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ as Judy Garland and Meet Me in St. Louis Return to Movie Theaters for the Holidays, Concluding 2019’s TCM Big Screen Classics Series

Celebrating 75 years, Meet Me in St. Louis, the movie that introduced audiences to the now-perennial holiday classic “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” returns to movie theaters for two days only – December 8 and 11 – as the 2019 TCM Big Screen Classics series draws to a spectacular close. (But movie fans needn’t worry: The details of 2020’s series will be announced very soon.)

Screen legend Judy Garland stars in the nostalgic turn-of-the-20th-century story of the joys, dramas, lives and loves of the Smith family during one memorable year. Garland is the second-eldest daughter, Esther, and Margaret O’Brien is her youngest sister, Tootie. Their world is changing...

Jeraldine Saunders, creator of hit ABC series The Love Boat, has died aged 96.

Saunders died at her home in Glendale from complications of kidney stone surgery that she underwent in December.

She was best known for writing the 1974 book The Love Boats, which the ABC comedy drama was based on. The book documented her experience on the high seas as the first female cruise director for a major cruise line, Princess Cruises.

The series, which was produced by Aaron Spelling, ran for nearly 250 episodes between 1977 and 1986.

Saunders recently received the Southern California Motion Picture Council’s Lifetime Achievement Award presented to her by The Love Boat star Bernie Kopell and Oscar winning actress Margaret O’Brien and also celebrated a Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony with the cast in May.

At this time of her death, Jeraldine Saunders was in the process of negotiating and writing an outline for a...

Anne Marie is tracking Judy Garland's career through musical numbers...

It's difficult to overstate the importance of Meet Me in St. Louis to the myth that is Judy Garland. The Wizard of Oz guaranteed Judy immortality at age 17, but the 1944 Freed musical would be the first Garland product to assemble the pieces of her myth beyond her larger-than-life talent. Though Meet Me in St. Louis is usually known as arguably the best "adult" performance by Judy Garland in an MGM musical, this time the alternately exciting and exhausting events offscreen would be as important to her image as her sparkling turn in Technicolor as Esther Smith.

 

The Movie: Meet Me In St. Louis (1944)

The Songwriters: Hugh Martin (lyrics), Ralph Blane (music)

The Players: Judy Garland, Mary Astor, Margaret O'Brien, Lucille Bremer, Leon Ames, directed by Vincente Minnelli

 

The Story: Long after the completion of Meet Me In St. Louis,...

Child actor Dickie Moore: 'Our Gang' member. Former child actor Dickie Moore dead at 89: Film career ranged from 'Our Gang' shorts to features opposite Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper 1930s child actor Dickie Moore, whose 100+ movie career ranged from Our Gang shorts to playing opposite the likes of Marlene Dietrich, Barbara Stanwyck, and Gary Cooper, died in Connecticut on Sept. 7, '15 – five days before his 90th birthday. So far, news reports haven't specified the cause of death. According to a 2013 Boston Phoenix article about Moore's wife, MGM musical star Jane Powell, he had been “suffering from arthritis and bouts of dementia.” Dickie Moore movies At the behest of a persistent family friend, combined with the fact that his father was out of a job, Dickie Moore (born on Sept. 12, 1925, in Los Angeles) made his film debut as an infant in Alan Crosland's 1927 costume drama The Beloved Rogue,...

Robert Walker: Actor in MGM films of the '40s. Robert Walker: Actor who conveyed boy-next-door charms, psychoses At least on screen, I've always found the underrated actor Robert Walker to be everything his fellow – and more famous – MGM contract player James Stewart only pretended to be: shy, amiable, naive. The one thing that made Walker look less like an idealized “Average Joe” than Stewart was that the former did not have a vacuous look. Walker's intelligence shone clearly through his bright (in black and white) grey eyes. As part of its “Summer Under the Stars” programming, Turner Classic Movies is dedicating today, Aug. 9, '15, to Robert Walker, who was featured in 20 films between 1943 and his untimely death at age 32 in 1951. Time Warner (via Ted Turner) owns the pre-1986 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer library (and almost got to buy the studio outright in 2009), so most of Walker's movies have...

Am I the only one who finds most Christmas movies hypocritical? They spend tens of millions on lavish productions, recreating Santa's workshop or some such, all to tell us that Christmas is not about material things but about simple pleasures. It's enough to make you long for the homespun, slightly threadbare charms of a classic Christmas movie, like "Meet Me in St. Louis," released 70 years ago this week (on November 22, 1944).

People remember the film for its radiant Judy Garland performance and its classic songs, but it's also worth noting that the family portrayed here is not always prosperous and happy. Its signature scene is angry little Margaret O'Brien whacking the snowmen to pieces, and its signature musical number is the saddest and most wistful of all Christmas standards, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," a song that yearns for happier times, "if the fates allow." Sometimes, as the song observes,...

Honorary Oscars have bypassed women: Angela Lansbury, Lauren Bacall among rare exceptions (photo: 2013 Honorary Oscar winner Angela Lansbury and Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award winner Angelina Jolie) September 4, 2014, Introduction: This four-part article on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Honorary Awards and the dearth of female Honorary Oscar winners was originally posted in February 2007. The article was updated in February 2012 and fully revised before its republication today. All outdated figures regarding the Honorary Oscars and the Academy's other Special Awards have been "scratched out," with the updated numbers and related information inserted below each affected paragraph or text section. See also "Honorary Oscars 2014 addendum" at the bottom of this post. At the 1936 Academy Awards ceremony, groundbreaking film pioneer D.W. Griffith, by then a veteran with more than 500 shorts and features to his credit — among them the epoch-making The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance — became the first individual to...

Diana reporting from TCM Film Festival's Opening Night Red Carpet. The classic stars came out and Anne Marie and I talked to them.

Oscar winner Shirley Jones with her husband and the Oklahoma! premiere. [Photo: David Buchan/Getty Images]

4 P.M. Hollywood Blvd.

The red carpet is rolled out in front of Grauman’s, but crewmembers are still finagling with the Oklahoma! stop-and-turns as the press begins to descend on the barricades. Within a few moments, we chosen not-so-few (journalists, cameramen, bloggers) swarm to our allocated spaces along the carpet, with The Film Experience smack dab in front of the Grauman’s entrance. Tip sheet in hand and audio recorder on standby, we stand and wait.

5 P.M. The Red Carpet Opens

We are told that Shirley Jones has arrived. In the distance and with some squinting, you can see the Oklahoma! songbird looking bubbly yet elegant in a dark pantsuit with Marty Ingels, her...

Anthony McCartney, AP Entertainment Writer

Los Angeles (AP) - Mickey Rooney, the pint-size, precocious actor and all-around talent whose more than 80-year career spanned silent comedies, Shakespeare, Judy Garland musicals, Andy Hardy stardom, television and the Broadway theater, died Sunday at age 93.

Los Angeles Police Commander Andrew Smith said that Rooney was with his family when he died at his North Hollywood home.

Smith said police took a death report but indicated that there was nothing suspicious and he had no additional details on the circumstances of his passing. The Los Angeles County Coroner's office said it was not their case because Rooney died a natural death.

There were no further immediate details on the cause of death, but Rooney did attend an Oscar party last month.

Rooney started his career in his parents' vaudeville act while still a toddler, and broke into movies before age 10. He was still racking...

Musicals have been tap dancing their way into moviegoers' hearts since the invention of cinema sound itself. From Oliver! to Singin' in the Rain, here are the Guardian and Observer critics' picks of the 10 best

• Top 10 documentaries

• Top 10 movie adaptations

• Top 10 animated movies

• Top 10 silent movies

• Top 10 sports movies

• Top 10 film noir

• More Guardian and Observer critics' top 10s

10. Oliver!

Historically, the British musical has been intertwined with British music, drawing on music hall in the 1940s and the pop charts in the 50s – low-budget films of provincial interest and nothing to trouble the bosses at MGM. In the late 60s, however, the genre enjoyed a brief, high-profile heyday, and between Tommy Steele in Half a Sixpence (1967) and Richard Attenborough's star-studded Oh! What A Lovely War (1969) came the biggest of them all: Oliver! (1968), Carol Reed's adaptation of Lionel Bart's 1960 stage hit and the recipient of six Academy awards.

Soprano Marni Nixon speaks about her not-so-secret roles in some of Hollywood's best-known musicals

Long before another Nixon got mixed up with a secret recording in Washington, Marni Nixon was one of the best-loved voices nobody knew. While stars like Deborah Kerr, Audrey Hepburn and Natalie Wood received the applause and record royalties for their work in musicals such as The King and I, My Fair Lady and West Side Story, it was Nixon's soprano who sang their songs uncredited, often after signing a contract never to disclose the ruse.

Years ago, the secret got out and Nixon became kind of a byword for behind-the-scenes vocal stand-ins, of the type that is used less today. But they still are used, says Nixon, 83. "They just have a cleverer way to do it."

Nixon was speaking by phone from New York before she recently travelled to Maryland to discuss her clandestine work,...

A nimble and distinctive cine-essay featuring a mosaic of clips, images and moments of children in the movies

This has to be one of the most beguiling events at Cannes, appropriately presented in the Cannes Classics section. Mark Cousins's personal cine-essay about children on film is entirely distinctive, sometimes eccentric, always brilliant: a mosaic of clips, images and moments chosen with flair and grace, both from familiar sources and from the neglected riches of cinema around the world. Without condescension or cynicism, Cousins offers us his own humanist idealism, as refreshing as a glass of iced water.

He presents movie texts which illuminate and challenge what we imagine to be the "performance" presented to the camera by a child, what we take to be the nature of childhood and by implication the unexamined "adultness" of those grownups variously appearing in, making or watching the film. He suggests that as an artform,...

Welcome to Holiday Favorites, a series in which Slackerwood contributors and our friends talk about the movies we watch during the holiday season, holiday-related or otherwise.

I wrote about a few of my favorite holiday classics last year, but neglected to include Meet Me in St. Louis! The 1944 film can be paired with 1949's In the Good Old Summertime for a Judy Garland turn-of-the-century Christmas double feature. These are two of my favorite Garland roles, but Meet Me in St. Louis has an edge because it contains her splendid performance of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (as well as "The Trolley Song," yay).

The year is 1903, and the multi-generational Smith family is upper-middle-class, living in their Victorian home and eager for the World's Fair in St. Louis. Esther (a 22-year-old Garland) is in her late teens, pining for her pipe-smoking young neighbor ("The Boy Next Door"). Oldest sister Rose...

Hollywood actor known for playing wholesome wives and Ma Kent in Superman

Although Phyllis Thaxter, who has died aged 92, had a successful career in films throughout the 1940s and 50s, many will remember her for her last movie role, in Superman (1978). It was the small but key part of Ma Kent, the childless farmer's wife who adopts a foundling baby and names him Clark. Together with her husband (Glenn Ford) – both made intentionally to resemble the couple in Grant Wood's American Gothic painting – they bring up the abnormally physically gifted boy until he's ready to fly off "to fight for truth, justice and the American way".

At one stage, she tells him: "We Kents don't like show-offs, ain't that so? A body's got to be humble even if he knows that he's better'n his neighbours." A fragile beauty, Thaxter was never a show-off, but made an impact in a gentle way,...

The Oscar-winning success of last year's "The Help" was a throwback in many ways, principally to the socially-conscious melodramas of Stanley Kramer, like "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner." Another comparison point that came up frequently in reviews of Tate Taylor's film was "Imitation Of Life," the 1959 film by director Douglas Sirk, but it's scarcely fair: over fifty years on, Sirk's picture stands head and shoulders above virtually every other melodrama.

The story follows widow and aspiring actress Lora (Lana Turner), whose daughter Susie goes missing at the beach, and is found by an African-American divorcee, Annie Johnson (Juanita Moore), there with her own light-skinned daughter, Sarah Jane. The two become friends, Lora taking Annie in as a housekeeper, and Annie's care helping Lora achieve her dream of becoming a Broadway star. Eleven years later, however, their children have grown up, and Susie (Sandra Dee) develops a crush on her mother's boyfriend Steve,...

Joan Fontaine in Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion Joan Fontaine, who turned 94 last October 22, shines on Turner Classic Movies' tonight. TCM will be showing five Fontaine movies: Jane Eyre (1944), The Constant Nymph (1943), Born to Be Bad (1950), Suspicion (1941), and Ivanhoe (1952). I've yet to check out The Constant Nymph, which had been unavailable for decades until TCM presented it a few months ago. In the film, 26-year-old Fontaine plays a 14-year-old infatuated with a composer (Charles Boyer) married to her older cousin (Alexis Smith). Edmund Goulding directed. Enough members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences must have found Fontaine quite believable as a lovestruck teen, for The Constant Nymph earned her her third (and final) Best Actress nomination. Jane Eyre has been made and remade about a zillion times in the last century or so. Fontaine's version, directed by Robert Stevenson (later of Mary Poppins fame) and co-starring Orson Welles as Rochester,...

Lily Tomlin, Joanne Worley, Carole Cook, Bruce Vilanch along with filmmaker and multi Tony-winning Director and Producer, Dori Berinstein all gathered on one stage to salute a star, an icon and a legend - Ms. Carol Channing. On Wednesday night, the Paley Center featured these incredible talents as well as gathering many more in the audience for the Los Angeles premiere screening of Carol Channing Larger Than Life. The panel members, who also appear in the critically acclaimed documentary, gathered with other friends, colleagues and fans of the woman who has been dubbed, and deservingly so, The First Lady of Musical Theatre. Seen among those in attendance were a who's who of Tony, Oscar, Emmy amp Golden Globe award winners including George Chakiris, Charles Fox, Davis Gaines, Ilene Graff, Tippi Hedren, Michael Learned, Kate Linder, Julie Newmar, Connie Stevens, Ruta Lee, Rose Marie, Richard Skipper, Barbara Van Orden, Dee Wallace and co-producer,...

As a teenager I'd scoff at the unreality of the Hollywood musical, but now their numbers seem utterly delightful

We are now nearing the end of a run of days that, by my reckoning, are always the most enjoyable London can offer. They start around 22 December, when taxis, tubes and restaurants are at last empty of Christmas drunks, and end on 3 or 4 January, when work resumes. Every year during this interval, an older and easier kind of London asserts itself; also, an emptier one. The people for whom the city is mainly a work station go home to Lancashire and France. Commuters, if they bother to come in, return soberly with last-minute parcels on the teatime trains. Tourists are fewer, and easily avoided once you leave the axis that stretches from Harrods to St Paul's. On the buses, you notice more people like yourself: middle-aged, or past it, and often...

This week we have a welcome rerelease of Meet Me in St Louis, which opened in America 67 years ago this month. It was the first truly great movie from the Freed unit, the MGM department specialising in musicals and headed since 1940 by Arthur Freed, who wrote some of the best songs of the 1920s and 30s and produced several of the finest films of the 20th century.

Freed acquired Sally Benson's series of New Yorker stories about the delightful middle-class Smith family proudly living in 1903 St Louis and looking forward to the following year's World's Fair but not to a proposed move to New York. He assembled the writers, composers, designers and cast, including the virtually unknown Vincente Minnelli, and told studio boss Louis B Mayer: "I want to make this into the most delightful piece of Americana ever." He achieved his aim with a movie that defines perfection,...

Dreams Of A Life (12A)

(Carol Morley, 2011, UK) Zawe Ashton, Neelam Bakshi, Jonathan Harden. 95 mins

This ingenious documentary unravels a bizarre mystery that cuts to our deepest emotional fears, but it also transcends its own genre. The mystery is Joyce Vincent – who tragically died alone in her London flat, aged 38, and whose body wasn't found until three years later. Who Joyce was and how this came to pass is gradually (partially) pieced together, as Morley tracks down former associates and stages reconstructions of her life (with Ashton, unrecognisable from her Fresh Meat incarnation). What starts as a horrific news item becomes the moving story of a real person, albeit an enigmatic one. And in the process, the film itself shifts from sobering documentary to dignifying biopic, giving this strange, sad story a subtle avant garde flourish.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows (12A)

(Guy Ritchie, 2011, Us) Robert Downey Jr, Jude Law,...

That stunner of a poster up there (or maybe it's a trade ad?) comes from Greenbriar Picture Shows, a blog dedicated primarily (but not exclusively) to Hollywood's golden age. Once or twice a week, John McElwee presents a batch of gorgeous reproductions of movie memorabilia bordered by essays on the production back stories and — this is what makes his angle unique — tales of the distribution and the immediate reception (critically as well as at the box office) of films from the mid-20th century: hits that'd soon be forgotten, flops that'd somehow make their way into the canon, and the perennials, such as Vincente Minnelli's Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). He'll be giving this one an extra-thorough treatment; yesterday's entry is just the first part of a series. It's also a tad more personal than others: "I hesitate calling Meet Me in St. Louis my favorite picture of all time,...

MGM meant musicals for more than a decade after the second world war. David Thomson looks at a time when a little cheer at the movies was appreciated – and wonders if the same couldn't be said now

There had been musicals before. In the 1930s, as soon as sound permitted, Warner Brothers developed what we call the Busby Berkeley pictures: they were black and white, and often aware of the harsh Depression times, but a choreographic lather of girls and fluid, orgasmic forms where the camera was itching to plunge into the centre of the "big O" – think of Footlight Parade, Gold Diggers of 1933 or 42nd Street. They had aerial shots of waves and whirlpools of chorus girls, opening and closing their legs in time with our desire. A few years later, at Rko Pictures, the Astaire-Rogers films came into being – where the gravity, beauty, and exhilaration of the...

Screen legend Elizabeth Taylor started her film career as a child, hitting it big when she starred as a 12-year-old girl hoping to become a jockey in "National Velvet." The violet-eyed beauty went on to star in some of cinema's classics, including "Giant," "Cleopatra" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

Take a look back at her filmography, along with great quotes and trivia!

The Best Elizabeth Taylor Movies'National Velvet' (1944)

Velvet Brown (Elizabeth Taylor...

Margaret O'Brien, Judy Garland, Meet Me in St. Louis Hugh Martin, best known for co-composing with Ralph Blane "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," sung by Judy Garland in Vincente Minnelli's 1944 classic Meet Me in St. Louis, died on March 10 in Encinitas, Calif. He was 96. According to The Guardian's Hugh Martin obit, in addition to Garland, others who have performed the song include Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, Doris Day and Bing Crosby. Pointedly, the Sinatra rendition is used as background for the execution of an American soldier for treason in blacklisted screenwriter-turned-director Carl Foreman's stark, all-star World War II drama The Victors (1963). "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," recipient of the most-performed feature-film standard from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, can also be heard on the soundtrack of The Godfather (1972); When Harry Met Sally (1989); Home Alone (1990); Miracle on 34th Street [...]...

A composer of classic musicals, he wrote Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Among the perennial Christmas songs, one of the most performed and popular is Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, with words and music by Hugh Martin, who has died aged 96. Since it was first sung by Judy Garland in the film Meet Me in St Louis (1944), this bittersweet yuletide ditty has been performed by hundreds of artists from Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, Doris Day and Bing Crosby to rock bands including Coldplay and Twisted Sister.

The song has featured in several other films, notably The Victors (1963), in which the Sinatra version is used ironically during the execution of an American soldier for treason; The Godfather (1972); When Harry Met Sally (1989); Home Alone (1990); Miracle On 34th Street (1994); and Donnie Brasco (1997). In 1989, the song received the award for most-performed feature-film standard from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

To honor the passing of the great songwriter Hugh Martin Friday at 96 years of age, a repost of a review of one of my 100 favorite movies, a member of my personal canon. (If you joined us after 2008 you can pretend it's a new essay!) Imagine giving the world such perfectly crafted enduring gifts as "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and "The Trolley Song". R.I.P. Mr. Martin.

Meet Me in St. Louis "The Blossoming of Judy Garland"

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

Directed by Vincente Minnelli; Written by Irving Brecher and Fred F Finklehoffe from the novel "5135 Kensington" by Sally Benson; Starring Judy Garland, Mary Astor, Leon Ames, Margaret O'Brien, Lucille Bremer, Harry Davenport, June Lockhart, Tom Drake and Marjorie Main; Production & Distributor Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM); Released 11/28/1944

It's Summer 1903 in Missouri and the Smith family are buzzing about the World's Fair coming to their town the following spring. Teenage...