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Burt Lancaster and Edward G. Robinson are excellent in this adaptation of Arthur Miller’s award-winning Broadway play, about a family torn apart by the denial of dark secrets from the WW2 homefront. Mady Christians is the mother who refuses to accept her son’s death, and Louisa Horton and Howard Duff the brother and sister trying to understand how their father could ship defective war materiel responsible for needless combat deaths. The show is powerful, even with Miller’s social message muted — and director Irving Reis gets it all on screen.

All My Sons

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1948 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 94 min. / Street Date January 4, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Edward G. Robinson, Burt Lancaster, Mady Christians, Louisa Horton, Howard Duff, Lloyd Gough, Harry Morgan, Arlene Francis, Elisabeth Fraser.

Cinematography: Russell Metty

Art Directors: Hilyard Brown, Bernard Herzbrun

Film Editor: Ralph Dawson

Original Music: Leith Stevens

Written for...

Closing out a year in which we’ve needed The Criterion Channel more than ever, they’ve now announced their impressive December lineup. Topping the highlights is a trio of Terrence Malick films––Badlands, Days of Heaven, and The New World––along with interviews featuring actors Richard Gere, Sissy Spacek, and Martin Sheen; production designer Jack Fisk; costume designer Jacqueline West; cinematographers Haskell Wexler and John Bailey; and more.

Also in the lineup is an Afrofuturism series, featuring an introduction by programmer Ashley Clark, with work by Lizzie Borden, Shirley Clarke, Souleymane Cissé, John Akomfrah, Terence Nance, and more. There’s also Mariano Llinás’s 14-hour epic La flor, Bill Morrison’s Dawson City: Frozen Time, Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You, Jennie Livingston’s Paris Is Burning, plus retrospectives dedicated to Mae West, Cary Grant, Barbra Streisand, and more.

Check out the lineup below and return every Friday for our weekly streaming picks.

TCM Fest At The Tcl Chinese | 6925 Hollywood Blvd.

The big news at the moment for any discerning Los Angeles cinephile is the TCM Classic Film Festival, which returns to Hollywood this month for its 10th edition. From April 11-14, over 75 films of classic and contemporary vintage will screen at multiple venues around the festival’s primary home at the Tcl Chinese Multiplex. Among the many themed programs, the big draw this year is a four-film selection of rare nitrate prints that will be presented at the Egyptian Theatre. These include Irving Reis’ Oscar-winning 1947 feature The Bachelor ...

TCM Fest At The Tcl Chinese | 6925 Hollywood Blvd.

The big news at the moment for any discerning Los Angeles cinephile is the TCM Classic Film Festival, which returns to Hollywood this month for its 10th edition. From April 11-14, over 75 films of classic and contemporary vintage will screen at multiple venues around the festival’s primary home at the Tcl Chinese Multiplex. Among the many themed programs, the big draw this year is a four-film selection of rare nitrate prints that will be presented at the Egyptian Theatre. These include Irving Reis’ Oscar-winning 1947 feature The Bachelor ...

Hollywood stars Sally Field and Bill Pullman are set to make their London stage debuts in a new production of Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons.” The pair will headline a spring 2019 production at London’s Old Vic Theatre.

Field and Pullman will star as Kate and Joe Keller, an American couple who, despite hard choices and even harder knocks, are a success story, having built a home, raised two more sons and established a thriving business. Set in 1947, the story sees the Kellers’ lives about to be shattered. With the return of a figure from the past, long-buried truths surface and the price of their American dream is laid bare.

“All My Sons” is a co-production between the Old Vic and U.K. theatrical touring company Headlong. It will be directed by Headlong’s New York-born artistic director, Jeremy Herrin, marking his first production at the Old Vic. Further...

Lucille Ball: The glamour look. Cate Blanchett to play Lucille Ball: Actress won Oscar for incarnating Ball's fellow Rko contract player Katharine Hepburn Two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett is reportedly slated to star in a biopic of former Rko and MGM actress and big-time television comedienne Lucille Ball. Aaron Sorkin, Oscar winner for David Fincher's The Social Network, will be responsible for the screenplay. According to Entertainment Weekly, the Lucille Ball film biopic will focus on Ball's two-decade marriage to her I Love Lucy costar Desi Arnaz. In 1960, the couple had an acrimonious divorce that supposedly “shocked” clueless fans unable to tell the difference between TV reality and real-life reality. Their children, Desi Arnaz Jr. and Lucie Arnaz, had modest acting careers in film and on TV in the '70s and '80s. As per the EW.com report, they're both producing the planned Lucille Ball biopic.

Brad Pitt 'Glory Days' costar Nicholas Kallsen Brad Pitt 'Glory Days' costar Nicholas Kallsen dead at 48 Nicholas Kallsen, who was featured opposite Brad Pitt in the short-lived television series Glory Days, has died at age 48 in Thailand according to online reports. Their source is one of Rupert Murdoch's rags, citing a Facebook posting by one of the actor's friends. The cause of death was purportedly – no specific source was provided – a drug overdose.* Aired on Fox in July 1990, Glory Days told the story of four high-school friends whose paths take different directions after graduation. Besides Nicholas Kallsen and Brad Pitt, the show also featured Spike Alexander and Evan Mirand. Glory Days lasted a mere six episodes – two of which directed by former Happy Days actor Anson Williams – before its cancellation. Roommates Nicholas Kallsen and Brad Pitt vying for same 'Thelma & Louise' role? The Murdoch tabloid also...

Teresa Wright: Later years (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright: From Marlon Brando to Matt Damon.") Teresa Wright and Robert Anderson were divorced in 1978. They would remain friends in the ensuing years.[1] Wright spent most of the last decade of her life in Connecticut, making only sporadic public appearances. In 1998, she could be seen with her grandson, film producer Jonah Smith, at New York's Yankee Stadium, where she threw the ceremonial first pitch.[2] Wright also became involved in the Greater New York chapter of the Als Association. (The Pride of the Yankees subject, Lou Gehrig, died of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in 1941.) The week she turned 82 in October 2000, Wright attended the 20th anniversary celebration of Somewhere in Time, where she posed for pictures with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. In March 2003, she was a guest at the 75th Academy Awards, in the segment showcasing Oscar-winning actors of the past. Two years later,...

Teresa Wright-Samuel Goldwyn association comes to a nasty end (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright in 'Shadow of a Doubt': Alfred Hitchcock Heroine in His Favorite Film.") Whether or not because she was aware that Enchantment wasn't going to be the hit she needed – or perhaps some other disagreement with Samuel Goldwyn or personal issue with husband Niven Busch – Teresa Wright, claiming illness, refused to go to New York City to promote the film. (Top image: Teresa Wright in a publicity shot for The Men.) Goldwyn had previously announced that Wright, whose contract still had another four and half years to run, was to star in a film version of J.D. Salinger's 1948 short story "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut." Instead, he unceremoniously – and quite publicly – fired her.[1] The Goldwyn organization issued a statement, explaining that besides refusing the assignment to travel to New York to help generate pre-opening publicity for Enchantment,...

Cary Grant movies: 'An Affair to Remember' does justice to its title (photo: Cary Grant ca. late 1940s) Cary Grant excelled at playing Cary Grant. This evening, fans of the charming, sophisticated, debonair actor -- not to be confused with the Bristol-born Archibald Leach -- can rejoice, as no less than eight Cary Grant movies are being shown on Turner Classic Movies, including a handful of his most successful and best-remembered star vehicles from the late '30s to the late '50s. (See also: "Cary Grant Classic Movies" and "Cary Grant and Randolph Scott: Gay Lovers?") The evening begins with what may well be Cary Grant's best-known film, An Affair to Remember. This 1957 romantic comedy-melodrama is unusual in that it's an even more successful remake of a previous critical and box-office hit -- the Academy Award-nominated 1939 release Love Affair -- and that it was directed...

Shirley Temple dead at 85: Was one of the biggest domestic box office draws of the ’30s (photo: Shirley Temple in the late ’40s) Shirley Temple, one of the biggest box office draws of the 1930s in the United States, died Monday night, February 10, 2014, at her home in Woodside, near San Francisco. The cause of death wasn’t made public. Shirley Temple (born in Santa Monica on April 23, 1928) was 85. Shirley Temple became a star in 1934, following the release of Paramount’s Alexander Hall-directed comedy-tearjerker Little Miss Marker, in which Temple had the title role as a little girl who, left in the care of bookies, almost loses her childlike ways before coming around to regenerate Adolphe Menjou and his gang. That same year, Temple became a Fox contract player, and is credited with saving the studio — 20th Century Fox from 1935 on — from bankruptcy. Whether or not that’s true is a different story,...

Crack-Up

Written by John Paxton, Ben Bengal and Ray Spencer

Directed by Irving Reis

U.S.A., 1946

A reoccurring question in the ongoing study and appreciation of art is whether art reflects life or vice versa. The real answer ostensibly lies somewhere in the middle, each informing and influencing the other, both embraced in seamless synchronicity. Knowing that, it stands to reason that art can, in effect, comment on itself and has at many a given opportunity in history. When done well one artistic medium may be utilized to comment on another, such as in the 1946 film Crack-Up, directed by Irving Reis. By no means a project lacking in potential, it misses the mark in some key respects, staying afloat with handsome visuals and capable leading actors.

George Steele (Pat O’Brien) arrives at the Manhattan art Museum one night in a state of severe intoxication. As is soon revealed,...

Lucille Ball, Easy to Wed Lucille Ball Centennial on TCM: Stage Door, Best Foot Forward Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am Du Barry Was A Lady (1943) A night club employee dreams he's Louis Xv, and the star he idolizes is his lady love. Dir: Roy Del Ruth. Cast: Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Gene Kelly. C-101 mins. 8:00 Am Panama Lady (1939) An oil man forces a cabaret singer to work for him after she tries to rob him. Dir: Jack Hively. Cast: Lucille Ball, Allan Lane, Steffi Duna. Bw-65 mins. 9:30 Am Without Love (1945) A World War II housing shortage inspires a widow to propose a marriage of convenience with an inventor. Dir: Harold S. Bucquet. Cast: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Lucille Ball. Bw-111 mins. 11:30 Am Miss Grant Takes Richmond (1949) An inept secretary goes to work for a bogus real estate firm thinking it's for real.