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Saucy pre-Code entertainment frequently served up risqué dialogue, with edgy content like promiscuity and drug use. Mitchell Leisen’s 1934 murder mystery goes straight for a supposed family-industry no-no: Broadway-revue near-nudity featuring Earl Carroll’s ‘Most Beautiful Girls In The World’. Victor McLaglen is an inept detective and Jack Oakie a wise-cracking impresario. Gertrude Michael and Kitty Carlisle carry the musical numbers, the most famous being an ode to the still-legal Sweet Marijuana. Showgirls like Lucille Ball possess the daring to don the skimpy costumes, even if they hadn’t yet learned what Marijuana was. Duke Ellington and his orchestra sit in for Ebony Rhapsody, a mixed-race musical number with room for ‘guest dancers from Harlem.’

Murder at the Vanities

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1934 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 89 min. / Street Date October 11, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Carl Brisson, Victor McLaglen, Jack Oakie, Kitty Carlisle, Dorothy Stickney, Gertrude Michael, Jessie Ralph,...

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Vintage magazines make a great collector’s item (or gift idea) for movie lovers, and anyone looking to capture that Old Hollywood aesthetic. But you don’t even have to leave the house to get your hands on these collectibles. If you’re not in the mood to visit a garage sale or thrift store, we put together a list of rare magazines that you can buy online.

From Photoplay to Movieland magazine, you might not be familiar with some of the publications listed but if you’re a fan of Hollywood’s Golden Era, then you’re likely to recognize some (if not all) of the screen legends captured on the covers,...

Ann Sheridan specialized in tough but good-hearted cookies—in Vincent Sherman’s 1947 thriller that good heart is sorely tested. Sheridan plays Nora Prentiss, a nightclub singer who falls into an uneasy affair with a surgeon played by Kent Smith. Things go off the rails when the volatile doctor fakes his death and takes Nora along for the ride. James Wong Howe’s cinematography is the ne plus ultra of noir lighting.

The post Nora Prentiss appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

This CinemaScope musical remake of 1939’s The Women is highly watchable, especially in this flawless digital remaster. The actresses that bare their claws, compete for husbands and just plain cat-fight are a choice batch, with favorites from the ’50s the ’40s the ’30s — plus a few wildflowers that bloomed cinematically for only a few years (Dolores Gray) and one that somehow managed immortality (Joan Collins). It’s highly watchable despite, or maybe because of, its criminally outdated recipe for marital bliss. Did women really go for this fantasy — did anybody ever really live like this?

The Opposite Sex

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1956 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 116 min. / Street Date October 27, 2020 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: June Allyson, Joan Collins, Dolores Gray, Ann Sheridan, Ann Miller, Leslie Nielsen, Jeff Richards, Agnes Moorehead, Charlotte Greenwood, Joan Blondell, Sam Levene, Alice Pearce, Barbara Jo Allen, Sandy Descher, Carolyn Jones, Jerry Antes, Harry James, Art Mooney,...

The Oscar winning co-writer and producer of Brokeback Mountain takes us on a cinematic journey through her life, and talks about the pleasures of writing with Larry McMurtry and Joe Bonnano, and what Ken Kesey’s favorite movie was.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Good Night, And Good Luck (2005)

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

Red River (1948)

The Last Picture Show (1971)

Hud (1963)

Piranha (1978)

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

They Drive By Night (1940)

Kings Row (1942)

The Ox-Bow Incident (1942)

The Grapes of Wrath (1942)

Buffalo Bill (1944)

Laura (1944)

Where The Sidewalk Ends (1950)

The Day of the Triffids (1963)

Moby Dick (1956)

Village of the Damned (1960)

Written on the Wind (1956)

Magnificent Obsession (1954)

There’s Always Tomorrow (1956)

All That Heaven Allows (1955)

Twelve Monkeys (1995)

Brazil (1985)

Lost In La Mancha (2002)

The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys (1996)

The Fisher King (1991)

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

The Deer Hunter (1978)

The Godfather (1972)

The Godfather Part II (1974)

A History of Violence...

Former Another World writer Jan Merlin died on September 20 in Los Angeles. He was 94.

Born on April 3, 1925, Merlin was a torpedo man aboard U.S. Navy destroyers during World War II. He studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York and appeared in the ensemble in the original 1948 Broadway production of "Mister Roberts," starring Henry Fonda.

From 1950-54, Merlin starred as Roger Manning on the kids TV program Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, based on a comic strip.

He moved to Hollywood for a role in Six Bridges to Cross (1955), starring Curtis, then appeared with Mamie Van Doren in Running Wild (1955), with Dale Robertson in A Day of Fury (1956), with Tom Tryon in Screaming Eagles (1956) and with Ann Sheridan in Woman and the Hunter (1957).

In 1958-59, Merlin portrayed Lt. Colin Kirby on The Rough Riders, an ABC series set in the aftermath of the Civil War.

His credits also included the...

1980: As the World Turns' Wade Bookstore caught on fire.

1988: Another World's Mary and Jason were caught in an explosion.

1988: General Hospital's Anna was held hostage.

1997: Sunset Beach's Annie held a gun on Ben."History speaks to artists. It changes the artist's thinking and is constantly reshaping it into different and unexpected images."

― Anselm Kiefer

"Today in Soap Opera History" is a collection of the most memorable, interesting and influential events in the history of scripted, serialized programs. From birthdays and anniversaries to scandals and controversies, every day this column celebrates the soap opera in American culture.

On this date in...

1966: On Another World, an argument between John and Lee led to a devastating car crash.

1967: Actress Ann Sheridan died at age 51. She played Kathryn Corning in Another World.

1972: On The Edge of Night, Kate Sloan (Jan Farrand) told Cookie Pollock (Fran Sharon) that...

Exciting news for fans of old WWII movies! Ann Sheridan and Dennis Morgan in Wings For The Eagle (1942) is now available on DVD from Warner Archives. Ordering information can be found Here

Draft dodger Corky Jones (Dennis Morgan) lands a job at the Lockheed aircraft plant in Burbank, California. Needing a place to stay, Corky moves in with his old pal Brad (Jack Carson) and his wife Roma (Ann Sheridan) to Brad’s delight and Roma’s chagrin. Things flare up between the pals when Roma’s chagrin turns to something more and Corky moves out of his now jealous pal’s place. Complications increase after Roma leaves Brad and all three end up working at the plant. Patriotism trumps passions when Pearl Harbor is attacked, and Corky learns a lesson in duty and sacrifice from an immigrant father (George Tobias) and son (Russell Arms) he works with. Dodging the draft no longer,...

1976: Mary made her Channel R News debut on Ryan's Hope.

1981: Another World's Mac was furious with Rachel.

1993: Bryan Dattilo debuted as Lucas on Days of our Lives.

2009: As the World Turns' Noah was kidnapped."All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity that the dry, shrivelled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut."

― Anne Brontë in "Agnes Grey"

"Today in Soap Opera History" is a collection of the most memorable, interesting and influential events in the history of scripted, serialized programs. From birthdays and anniversaries to scandals and controversies, every day this column celebrates the soap opera in American culture.

On this date in...

1966: On Another World, Katherine Corning (Ann Sheridan) left for San Francisco where she planned on packing up and moving back to Bay City to be near her daughter,...

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film and TV critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday. (The answer to the second, “What is the best film in theaters right now?”, can be found at the end of this post.)

This week’s question: In honor of Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk,” what is the best war movie ever made?

Read More‘Dunkirk’ Review: Christopher Nolan’s Monumental War Epic Is The Best Film He’s Ever Made Richard Brody (@tnyfrontrow), The New Yorker

Howard Hawks’ “The Dawn Patrol,” from 1930, shows soldiers and officers cracking up from the cruelty of their missions — and shows the ones who manage not to, singing and clowning with an exuberance that suggests the rictus of a death mask. There’s courage and heroism, virtue and honor — at a price that makes the words themselves seem foul. John Ford’s “The Lost Patrol,...

Between the horrors of the Baby Jane shoot, Joan’s Oscar-night stunt, and her and Bette’s natural antipathy, you would think that the last thing either of them would ever do would be team up again. But desperate times call for desperate measures. So, with the mortal enemies’ stars fading down to mere flickers, Sunday’s Feud: Bette and Joan found Davis and Crawford signing on to headline Bob’s new thriller, What Ever Happened to Cousin Charlotte? How did it go? As if you don’t already know the legend, read on…

RelatedFeud Season 2 to Focus on Charles...

There are two major sides to the film noir coin, as I see it – the psychological and the practical. Now, the practical noir is fairly straightforward; maybe a detective has to solve a crime, or someone gets themselves in over their head with some scheme gone wrong. There’s a problem to be solved, and the protagonist either overcomes or becomes consumed by it. Double Indemnity, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Night and the City, The Killing, and The Maltese Falcon fit into this section rather well. The psychological noir uses genre tropes to investigate someone’s soul, usually stemming from their nearness to sin and death. Scarlet Street, Laura, Female on the Beach, The Chase, Sunset Boulevard, and Kiss Me Deadly fit the bill. Obviously films in each use elements of the other to shade the characters or move the story along, but the texture and flavor is notably distinct,...

By Tim Greaves

(The following reviews pertain to the UK Region 2 releases)

When I'm in the right mood I adore bit of film noir. I admire the diversity of its storytelling, I love every facet, from the hardboiled private eyes, duplicitous dames and characters that seldom turn out to be what they first appear, to the alleyways bathed in inky shadows, ramshackle apartments and half-lit street corners they inhabit. How can you not get drawn in by the sheer delight of Edward G Robinson playing a second rate psychic trying to convince the authorities he can see the future in The Night Has a Thousand Eyes? Or amnesiac John Hodiak on a mission to discover his own identity, in the process getting embroiled in a 3-year-old murder case and the search for a missing $2 million in Somewhere in the Night? Yes, indeed, there's nothing quite like a hearty serving of...

Bogie's back and Bacall's got him! Or, at least she's got his voice, and a bundle of bandages. A David Goodis hardboiled crime tale becomes an absurd pile of coincidences and accidental relationships, all wrapped up (literally) in a giant plastic-surgery gimmick. Bogart and his new bride Bacall are charming, but there's a show -stealer at large: the great Agnes Moorehead plays the most entertainingly horrible harpy in film history. Dark Passage Blu-ray Warner Archive Collection 1947 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 106 min. / Street Date May 17, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 16.59 Starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Agnes Moorehead, Bruce Bennett, Tom D'Andrea, Clifton Young, Douglas Kennedy, Rory Mallinson, Houseley Stevenson Cinematography Sid Hickox Art Direction Charles H. Clarke Film Editor David Weisbart Original Music Franz Waxman Written by Delmer Daves from a novel by David Goodis Produced by Jerry Wald, Jack L. Warner Directed by Delmer Daves

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Dark Passage...

What in the world -- an A + top-rank film noir gem hiding under the radar, and rescued (most literally) by the Film Noir Foundation. Ann Sheridan and Dennis O'Keefe trade dialogue as good as any in a film from 1950 -- it's a thriller with a cynical worldview yet a sentimental personal outlook. Woman on the Run Blu-ray + DVD Flicker Alley / FIlm Noir Foundation 1950 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 79 min. / Street Date May 17, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Ann Sheridan, Dennis O'Keefe, Robert Keith, John Qualen, Frank Jenks, Ross Elliott, Jane Liddell, Joan Fulton, J. Farrell MacDonald, Steven Geray, Victor Sen Yung, Reiko Sato. Cinematography Hal Mohr Art Direction Boris Leven Film Editor Otto Ludwig Original Music Arthur Lange, Emil Newman Written by Alan Campbell, Norman Foster, Sylvia Tate Produced by Howard Welsch, Ann Sheridan Directed by Norman Foster

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Amazing! Just when one thinks one won't see another top-rank film noir, the...

Noir if I can help it! Sultry Lizabeth Scott out-'fatals' every femme we know in this wickedly ruthless tale of unadulterated female venality. Rough creep Dan Duryea meets his match, as do other unfortunate males that get between Liz and a plump bag of blackmail loot. The Film Noir Foundation's restoration is a valiant rescue job, for a worthy 'annihilating melodrama.' Too Late for Tears Blu-ray + DVD Flicker Alley / FIlm Noir Foundation 1949 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 102 min. / Street Date May 17, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Lizabeth Scott, Don DeFore, Dan Duryea, Arthur Kennedy, Kristine Miller, Barry Kelley Cinematography William Mellor Art Direction James Sullivan Film Editor Harry Keller Original Music Dale Butts Written by Roy Huggins from his story Produced by Hunt Stromberg Directed by Byron Haskin

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Who's doing good work for film preservation? The Film Noir Foundation has racked up some impressive rescues and restorations in the last fifteen years or so,...

As a supplement to our Recommended Discs weekly feature, Peter Labuza regularly highlights notable recent home-video releases with expanded reviews. See this week’s selections below.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Two new restorations from the UCLA Film and Television Archive, in conjunction with the Film Noir Foundation, certainly speak to that ethos. First up, the piercing eyes of Lisabeth Scott explain everything one might need to know about this woman who wants it all. In Byron Haskin‘s Too Late for Tears, writer Roy Huggins stages a flipped gender perspective of Double Indemnity. Driving along with her dull husband (Arthur Kennedy at his most subdued), Scott’s Jane Palmer has a bag of $60,000 literally drop in her lap. Goody two-shoes husband wants to hand it to the authorities, but she sees this as the opportunity to finally lean in. Dp William C. Mellor lights Scott’s...

Banished by Josef Goebbels and threatened by the Reich, the creative core of the German film industry found itself in sunny Los Angeles, many not speaking English but determined to carry on as writers, directors and actors. More than simply surviving, they made a profound impact on Hollywood moviemaking. Cinema's Exiles: From Hitler to Hollywood DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 2009 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 117 min. / Street Date April 12, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Cinematography Joan Churchill, Emil Fischhaber Film Editor Anny Lowery Meza Original Music Peter Melnick Written, Produced and Directed by Karen Thomas

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Cinema's Exiles: From Hitler to Hollywood is the perfect docu to introduce people to the way film and world history are intertwined... and also to generate interest in older movies and classic cinema. Instead of a story about the making of movies, it's about a fascinating group of filmmakers forced to abandon...

The fine folks at Flicker Alley have just announced two new Blu-rays coming in April 2016:

Flicker Alley, the Film Noir Foundation, and UCLA Film & Television Archive are proud to present two rediscovered gems of film noir, Too Late for Tears and Woman on the Run, both brilliantly restored in brand-new Blu-ray/DVD dual-format editions.

Here is a preview of Noir City, included in the supplements.

Here is the press release they’ve sent out:

Flicker Alley, the Film Noir Foundation, and UCLA Film & Television Archive are proud to present two rediscovered gems of film noir, Too Late for Tears and Woman on the Run, both brilliantly restored in brand-new Blu-ray/DVD dual-format editions.

Too Late For Tears

Finally! One of the great missing films of the classic noir era-resurrected! Rescued and preserved after a five-year crusade by the Film Noir Foundation, this 1949 classic is at long last available in a clean digital version,...

An awkward thing happened to the Leonardo DiCaprio film The Revenant as it trekked into theaters last last year in hopes of picking up award show nominations: A rumor put the film in headlines but for reasons that none of its publicists were happy about. In early December, 20th Century Fox spokespeople were forced to clarify that no, the film does not feature a scene in which its star is raped by a bear. DiCaprio himself later weighed in on the rumor, calling it "absurd," and when the film finally hit theaters on Christmas Day, audiences saw that the rumor...

Joan Collins in 'The Bitch': Sex tale based on younger sister Jackie Collins' novel. Author Jackie Collins dead at 77: Surprisingly few film and TV adaptations of her bestselling novels Jackie Collins, best known for a series of bestsellers about the dysfunctional sex lives of the rich and famous and for being the younger sister of film and TV star Joan Collins, died of breast cancer on Sept. 19, '15, in Los Angeles. The London-born (Oct. 4, 1937) Collins was 77. Collins' tawdry, female-centered novels – much like those of Danielle Steel and Judith Krantz – were/are immensely popular. According to her website, they have sold more than 500 million copies in 40 countries. And if the increasingly tabloidy BBC is to be believed (nowadays, Wikipedia has become a key source, apparently), every single one of them – 32 in all – appeared on the New York Times' bestseller list. (Collins' own site claims that a mere 30 were included.) Sex...

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.

Ingrid Bergman ca. early 1940s. Ingrid Bergman movies on TCM: From the artificial 'Gaslight' to the magisterial 'Autumn Sonata' Two days ago, Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” series highlighted the film career of Greta Garbo. Today, Aug. 28, '15, TCM is focusing on another Swedish actress, three-time Academy Award winner Ingrid Bergman, who would have turned 100 years old tomorrow. TCM has likely aired most of Bergman's Hollywood films, and at least some of her early Swedish work. As a result, today's only premiere is Fielder Cook's little-seen and little-remembered From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1973), about two bored kids (Sally Prager, Johnny Doran) who run away from home and end up at New York City's Metropolitan Museum. Obviously, this is no A Night at the Museum – and that's a major plus. Bergman plays an elderly art lover who takes an interest in them; her...

Vivien Leigh ca. late 1940s. Vivien Leigh movies: now controversial 'Gone with the Wind,' little-seen '21 Days Together' on TCM Vivien Leigh is Turner Classic Movies' star today, Aug. 18, '15, as TCM's “Summer Under the Stars” series continues. Mostly a stage actress, Leigh was seen in only 19 films – in about 15 of which as a leading lady or star – in a movie career spanning three decades. Good for the relatively few who saw her on stage; bad for all those who have access to only a few performances of one of the most remarkable acting talents of the 20th century. This evening, TCM is showing three Vivien Leigh movies: Gone with the Wind (1939), 21 Days Together (1940), and A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). Leigh won Best Actress Academy Awards for the first and the third title. The little-remembered film in-between is a TCM premiere. 'Gone with the Wind' Seemingly all...

Joan Crawford Movie Star Joan Crawford movies on TCM: Underrated actress, top star in several of her greatest roles If there was ever a professional who was utterly, completely, wholeheartedly dedicated to her work, Joan Crawford was it. Ambitious, driven, talented, smart, obsessive, calculating, she had whatever it took – and more – to reach the top and stay there. Nearly four decades after her death, Crawford, the star to end all stars, remains one of the iconic performers of the 20th century. Deservedly so, once you choose to bypass the Mommie Dearest inanity and focus on her film work. From the get-go, she was a capable actress; look for the hard-to-find silents The Understanding Heart (1927) and The Taxi Dancer (1927), and check her out in the more easily accessible The Unknown (1927) and Our Dancing Daughters (1928). By the early '30s, Joan Crawford had become a first-rate film actress, far more naturalistic than...

Olivia de Havilland picture U.S. labor history-making 'Gone with the Wind' star and two-time Best Actress winner Olivia de Havilland turns 99 (This Olivia de Havilland article is currently being revised and expanded.) Two-time Best Actress Academy Award winner Olivia de Havilland, the only surviving major Gone with the Wind cast member and oldest surviving Oscar winner, is turning 99 years old today, July 1.[1] Also known for her widely publicized feud with sister Joan Fontaine and for her eight movies with Errol Flynn, de Havilland should be remembered as well for having made Hollywood labor history. This particular history has nothing to do with de Havilland's films, her two Oscars, Gone with the Wind, Joan Fontaine, or Errol Flynn. Instead, history was made as a result of a legal fight: after winning a lawsuit against Warner Bros. in the mid-'40s, Olivia de Havilland put an end to treacherous...

What fun it is to attend the Noir City Festival at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood every spring. It’s hard to believe that it’s been seventeen years since Eddie Muller first programmed this exhilarating event with the American Cinematheque. He and his partner-in-noir Alan K. Rode host the screenings that bring a large and diverse audience to the Egyptian for classics, discoveries, and bread-and-butter pictures that otherwise wouldn’t get a chance to be projected in 35mm on the big screen. Last Friday’s opening bill paid tribute to Ann Sheridan with a double-bill: Woman on the Run (1950), recently restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and the Film Noir Foundation with funding...

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Cinema Retro has received the following press release:

Revisit 1939, Hollywood’s Greatest Year, with 4 New Blu-ray™ Debuts

The Golden Year Collection June 9

Features Newly Restored Blu-ray Debut of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Starring Charles Laughton, and Blu-ray Debuts of – Bette Davis’ Dark Victory, Errol Flynn’s Dodge City and Greta Garbo’s Ninotchka. Collection also includes Gone With the Wind.

Burbank, Calif. March 10, 2015 – On June 9, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment will celebrate one of the most prolific twelve months in Hollywood’s history with the 6-disc The Golden Year Collection. Leading the five-film set will be the Blu-ray debut of

The Hunchback of Notre Dame, in a new restoration which will have its world premiere at TCM’s Classic Film Festival beginning March 26 in Los Angeles. Charles Laughton and Maureen O’Hara star in Victor Hugo’s tragic tale which William Dieterle directed.

The other films featured in the Wbhe...

Cary Grant films on TCM: Gender-bending 'I Was a Male War Bride' (photo: Cary Grant not gay at all in 'I Was a Male War Bride') More Cary Grant films will be shown tonight, as Turner Classic Movies continues with its Star of the Month presentations. On TCM right now is the World War II action-drama Destination Tokyo (1943), in which Grant finds himself aboard a U.S. submarine, alongside John Garfield, Dane Clark, Robert Hutton, and Tom Tully, among others. The directorial debut of screenwriter Delmer Daves (The Petrified Forest, Love Affair) -- who, in the following decade, would direct a series of classy Westerns, e.g., 3:10 to Yuma, The Hanging Tree -- Destination Tokyo is pure flag-waving propaganda, plodding its way through the dangerous waters of Hollywood war-movie stereotypes and speechifying banalities. The film's key point of interest, in fact, is Grant himself -- not because he's any good,...

First Best Actor Oscar winner Emil Jannings and first Best Actress Oscar winner Janet Gaynor on TCM (photo: Emil Jannings in 'The Last Command') First Best Actor Academy Award winner Emil Jannings in The Last Command, first Best Actress Academy Award winner Janet Gaynor in Sunrise, and sisters Norma Talmadge and Constance Talmadge are a few of the silent era performers featured this evening on Turner Classic Movies, as TCM continues with its Silent Monday presentations. Starting at 5 p.m. Pt / 8 p.m. Et on November 17, 2014, get ready to check out several of the biggest movie stars of the 1920s. Following the Jean Negulesco-directed 1943 musical short Hit Parade of the Gay Nineties -- believe me, even the most rabid anti-gay bigot will be able to enjoy this one -- TCM will be showing Josef von Sternberg's The Last Command (1928) one of the two movies that earned...

The new online issue of the multi-lingual La Furia Umana features dossiers on Yasujiro Ozu, Peter Hutton and Monte Hellman, Bani Khoshnoudi's personal remembrance of Harun Farocki, interviews with Lav Diaz, Anthony Stern, Naeem Mohaiemen and more. Also in today's roundup of news and views: Amelie Hastie in Film Quarterly on Maleficent, interviews with Jem Cohen, Jill Soloway and Michael M. Bilandic, Graham Fuller on Ann Sheridan, Doug Cummings on expressionism and Karina Longworth on Marlon Brando. » - David Hudson...

The new online issue of the multi-lingual La Furia Umana features dossiers on Yasujiro Ozu, Peter Hutton and Monte Hellman, Bani Khoshnoudi's personal remembrance of Harun Farocki, interviews with Lav Diaz, Anthony Stern, Naeem Mohaiemen and more. Also in today's roundup of news and views: Amelie Hastie in Film Quarterly on Maleficent, interviews with Jem Cohen, Jill Soloway and Michael M. Bilandic, Graham Fuller on Ann Sheridan, Doug Cummings on expressionism and Karina Longworth on Marlon Brando. » - David Hudson...

The "strong woman" label patronizingly foisted on modern Hollywood actresses would've been spat at by such formidable 1940s Warner Bros. stars as Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Ida Lupino. Their hard-boiled but restrained studio-mate Ann Sheridan (1915-67) is less celebrated today, but her cool aplomb has aged better than Davis's hectoring, Crawford's emotionalism, even Lupino's unstable toughness.

Onetime Texas teaching student Clara Lou Sheridan adopted her marquee-friendlier name when she signed with the Warners in 1936 after a lackluster Paramount apprenticeship. The latter studio had failed to recognize that, like its employee Marlene Dietrich, Sheridan wasn't meant to play tootsies, but grown women amused by sexual gamesmanship — the word knowing might have b...

Honorary Award: Gloria Swanson, Rita Hayworth among dozens of women bypassed by the Academy (photo: Honorary Award non-winner Gloria Swanson in 'Sunset Blvd.') (See previous post: "Honorary Oscars: Doris Day, Danielle Darrieux Snubbed.") Part three of this four-part article about the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Honorary Award bypassing women basically consists of a long, long — and for the most part quite prestigious — list of deceased women who, some way or other, left their mark on the film world. Some of the names found below are still well known; others were huge in their day, but are now all but forgotten. Yet, just because most people (and the media) suffer from long-term — and even medium-term — memory loss, that doesn't mean these women were any less deserving of an Honorary Oscar. So, among the distinguished female film professionals in Hollywood and elsewhere who have passed away without...

Joan Lorring, 1945 Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee, dead at 88: One of the earliest surviving Academy Award nominees in the acting categories, Lorring was best known for holding her own against Bette Davis in ‘The Corn Is Green’ (photo: Joan Lorring in ‘Three Strangers’) Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nominee Joan Lorring, who stole the 1945 film version of The Corn Is Green from none other than Warner Bros. reigning queen Bette Davis, died Friday, May 30, 2014, in the New York City suburb of Sleepy Hollow. So far, online obits haven’t mentioned the cause of death. Lorring, one of the earliest surviving Oscar nominees in the acting categories, was 88. Directed by Irving Rapper, who had also handled one of Bette Davis’ biggest hits, the 1942 sudsy soap opera Now, Voyager, Warners’ The Corn Is Green was a decent if uninspired film version of Emlyn Williams’ semi-autobiographical 1938 hit play about an English schoolteacher,...

This week on Trailers from Hell, Joe Dante talks about Archie Mayo's controversial 1937 film "Black Legion," starring Humphrey Bogart. One of the more provocative entries in Warner Bros.' line of socially conscious potboilers, "Black Legion" is based on the real events surrounding a murderous splinter group of the Ku Klux Klan that, though numbering only around 30,000 members, still managed to rattle the nerves of a large portion of the populace in the late thirties. Humphrey Bogart stars as the ill-fated pawn of the black-hooded vigilantes and he's supported by Warner Bros.' favorite gum-cracking girlfriend, Ann Sheridan, along with future Universal contractor Dick Foran as his best friend. Directed by Archie Mayo with some uncredited help from Michael Curtiz. From the Believe It or Not Dept., the Ku Klux Klan sued Warners for using their patented logo in the film.

One of the more provocative entries in Warner Bros.’ line of socially conscious potboilers, Black Legion is based on the real events surrounding a murderous splinter group of the Ku Klux Klan that, though numbering only around 30,000 members, still managed to rattle the nerves of a large portion of the populace in the late thirties. Humphrey Bogart stars as the ill-fated pawn of the black-hooded vigilantes and he’s supported by Warner Bros.’ favorite gum-cracking girlfriend, Ann Sheridan, along with future Universal contractor Dick Foran as his best friend. Directed by Archie Mayo with some uncredited help from Michael Curtiz.

The post Black Legion appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

Woman on the Run

Written by Alan Campbell and Norman Foster

Directed by Norman Foster

U.S.A., 1950

It is a quaint evening as Frank Johnson (Ross Elliot) walks his dog in a San Francisco park. None too far away arrives a car with two occupants, one whose face seen and another the driver’s whose face is concealed from the viewer. The driver suddenly shoots and murders his companion and, upon noticing Frank’s presence, takes fire at the passerby before leaving the premise. Having taken refuge from the bullets, Frank security is short lived, as the police explain later on that the departed was none other but a key witness in a ongoing trial against a major local gangster. Frank is now an eyewitness to a murder and the new target of those who wish to see the infamous mobster walk away free. Perturbed by his predicament, the man flees the police,...

Auteurs! week concludes at Trailers from Hell with director Allan Arkush introducing Raoul Walsh's "The Man I Love," starring Ida Lupino in a powerhouse performance.Walsh's atmospheric noir soaper was originally intended for Ann Sheridan in the lead role. This troubled production received mixed reviews, but it touched an audience nerve and became a big hit. One of Martin Scorsese’s favorites.

Hattie McDaniel as Mammy in ‘Gone with the Wind’: TCM schedule on August 20, 2013 (photo: Vivien Leigh and Hattie McDaniel in ‘Gone with the Wind’) See previous post: “Hattie McDaniel: Oscar Winner Makes History.” 3:00 Am Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943). Director: David Butler. Cast: Joan Leslie, Dennis Morgan, Eddie Cantor, Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Errol Flynn, John Garfield, Ida Lupino, Ann Sheridan, Dinah Shore, Alexis Smith, Jack Carson, Alan Hale, George Tobias, Edward Everett Horton, S.Z. Sakall, Hattie McDaniel, Ruth Donnelly, Don Wilson, Spike Jones, Henry Armetta, Leah Baird, Willie Best, Monte Blue, James Burke, David Butler, Stanley Clements, William Desmond, Ralph Dunn, Frank Faylen, James Flavin, Creighton Hale, Sam Harris, Paul Harvey, Mark Hellinger, Brandon Hurst, Charles Irwin, Noble Johnson, Mike Mazurki, Fred Kelsey, Frank Mayo, Joyce Reynolds, Mary Treen, Doodles Weaver. Bw-127 mins. 5:15 Am Janie (1944). Director: Michael Curtiz. Cast: Joyce Reynolds, Robert Hutton,...

Bette Davis movies: TCM schedule on August 14 (photo: Bette Davis in ‘Dangerous,’ with Franchot Tone) See previous post: “Bette Davis Eyes: They’re Watching You Tonight.” 3:00 Am Parachute Jumper (1933). Director: Alfred E. Green. Cast: Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Bette Davis, Frank McHugh, Claire Dodd, Harold Huber, Leo Carrillo, Thomas E. Jackson, Lyle Talbot, Leon Ames, Stanley Blystone, Reginald Barlow, George Chandler, Walter Brennan, Pat O’Malley, Paul Panzer, Nat Pendleton, Dewey Robinson, Tom Wilson, Sheila Terry. Bw-72 mins. 4:30 Am The Girl From 10th Avenue (1935). Director: Alfred E. Green. Cast: Bette Davis, Ian Hunter, Colin Clive, Alison Skipworth, John Eldredge, Phillip Reed, Katharine Alexander, Helen Jerome Eddy, Bill Elliott, Edward McWade, André Cheron, Wedgwood Nowell, John Quillan, Mary Treen. Bw-69 mins. 6:00 Am Dangerous (1935). Director: Alfred E. Green. Cast: Bette Davis, Franchot Tone, Margaret Lindsay, Alison Skipworth, John Eldredge, Dick Foran, Walter Walker, Richard Carle, George Irving, Pierre Watkin, Douglas Wood,...

Bette Davis’ eyes keep ‘Watch on the Rhine’ Bette Davis’ eyes are watching everything and everyone on Turner Classic Movies this evening, as TCM continues with its "Summer Under the Stars" film series: today, August 14, 2013, belongs to two-time Oscar winner Bette Davis’ eyes, cigarettes, and clipped tones. Right now, TCM is showing the Herman Shumlin-directed Watch on the Rhine (1943), an earnest — too much so, in fact — melodrama featuring Nazis, anti-Nazis, and lofty political speeches. (See “Bette Davis Movies: TCM schedule.”) As a prestigious and timely Warner Bros. release, Watch on the Rhine was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award and earned Paul Lukas the year’s Best Actor Oscar. Bette Davis has a subordinate role and — for once during her years as Warners’ Reigning Queen — subordinate billing as well. As so often happens when Davis tried to play a sympathetic character, she’s not very good; Lukas, however,...

Humphrey Bogart movies: ‘The Maltese Falcon,’ ‘High Sierra’ (Image: Most famous Humphrey Bogart quote: ‘The stuff that dreams are made of’ from ‘The Maltese Falcon’) (See previous post: “Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall Movies.”) Besides 1948, 1941 was another great year for Humphrey Bogart — one also featuring a movie with the word “Sierra” in the title. Indeed, that was when Bogart became a major star thanks to Raoul Walsh’s High Sierra and John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon. In the former, Bogart plays an ex-con who falls in love with top-billed Ida Lupino — though both are outacted by ingénue-with-a-heart-of-tin Joan Leslie. In the latter, Bogart plays Dashiel Hammett’s private detective Sam Spade, trying to discover the fate of the titular object; along the way, he is outacted by just about every other cast member, from Mary Astor’s is-she-for-real dame-in-distress to Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nominee Sydney Greenstreet. John Huston...

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall: From ‘To Have and Have Not’ to ‘Key Largo’ Humphrey Bogart (born on Christmas Day 1899, in New York City) is Turner Classic Movies’ first “Summer Under the Stars” star on Thursday, August 1, 2013. TCM will be showing several Bogart movies not made at Warner Bros., e.g., 20th Century Fox’s The Left Hand of God and Columbia’s In a Lonely Place, but nothing that the cable network hasn’t presented before. In other words, don’t expect anything along the lines of the 1934 crime drama Midnight or the 1931 Western A Holy Terror (assuming these two movies still exist). Now, the good news: No Casablanca — which was shown on Tuesday, as part of TCM’s Paul Henreid movie series. (See “Humphrey Bogart Movies — TCM schedule.) (Photo: Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not.) Of TCM’s Humphrey Bogart movies I’ve seen,...

Son of a bitch! George Brent and other Warner Bros. stars forget their lines (photo: George Brent ca. 1940) The Warner Bros. outtakes from the studio’s 1939 and 1940 productions (see below) feature a whole array of movie stars and supporting players not getting things quite right while the cameras were rolling. Perhaps the biggest "star" — i.e., the one featured the most — in the montage is George Brent, who curses right and left after not getting his lines right in several scenes. But not to worry; "son of a bitch" is the strongest exclamation we get to hear. (I’m assuming stronger fare is to be found in the outtakes’ outtakes.) Besides George Brent, the Warner Bros. bloopers montage has Paul Muni joking around while forgetting his lines during the making of We Are Not Alone; Miriam Hopkins having her dramatic moment in The Old Maid ruined by a young maid...

If I may, I’d like to quote from Entertainment Weekly’s review of the just released 70th anniversary Blue-ray release of Casablanca (1942). According to Chris Nashawaty’s piece, when the script arrived at Warner Bros. in December of 1941 “…there wasn’t an ending yet…the movie was just one of 50 in Warner’s crowded pipeline at the time…The reliably bland Ronald Reagan was considered for the lead, then George Raft, with ‘Oomph Girl’ Ann Sheridan floated as love interest. In other words, this forgettable little project carried all the telltale signs of becoming just another disposable feature that would run for a few weeks and then be swept away like the stray popcorn kernels and Lucky Strike butts littering theater floors.”

As we all know, that’s not exactly how it played out.

My point being that classic movies don’t always come about because someone sits down and says,...

In Mason Wiley and Damien Bona's Inside Oscar, Luise Rainer is quoted as saying the following about winning back-to-back Best Actress Academy Awards for The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and The Good Earth (1937): "The industry seemed to feel that having an Academy Award winner on their hands was sufficient to overcome bad story material, which was often handed out afterwards to a star under long-term contract." Of course, "bad story material" was handed to contract players regardless of whether or not they had won Academy Awards. Just ask Ann Sheridan, Olivia de Havilland, Myrna Loy, and all those who went on suspension because they refused what they saw as subpar screenplays. Also, Rainer herself didn't fare too badly in 1938, the year she received her second Academy Award: her three releases that year were Robert B. Sinclair's Dramatic School, with Alan Marshal and Paulette Goddard; Julien Duvivier's The Great Waltz,...

During the early 1940′s the Hollywood studio system was at its peak. At Warner Brothers, studio head Jack Warner and as his right hand man, executive in charge of production, Hal B. Wallis confidently stood shoulder to shoulder with the other major studios. Back then Hollywood would churn out at least one movie per week from each studio. It was like a factory, pumping out movies on a production line. Casablanca was like any other film at the time, made for a cheap buck as opposed to any strong artistic merit. Funny then that it has since gone on to become one of the most beloved films of all time.

Casablanca was just another place on the map until Hal Wallis got his hands on a play entitled ‘Everybody Comes To Rick’s‘. Based upon the travels of playwrights Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, the play was unproduced at the...

The Letter (1929) Direction: Jean de Limur Cast: Jeanne Eagels, O.P. Heggie, Reginald Owen, Herbert Marshall, Irene Browne, Lady Tsen Mei, Tamaki Yoshiwara Screenplay: Garrett Fort; from W. Somerset Maugham's 1927 play, itself based on a Maugham story found in the 1924 collection The Casuarina Tree Oscar Movies, Pre-Code Movies Jeanne Eagels, Herbert Marshall, The Letter Having watched William Wyler's masterful 1940 film adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's 1927 play The Letter and having read quite a bit about Broadway star Jeanne Eagels' remarkable talent, I was expecting to find at least a modicum of interest in Jean de Limur's 1929 version of Maugham's crime-of-passion melodrama. I'm sorry to report I was greatly disappointed, even though Garrett Fort's screenplay is quite similar to the one used in the Wyler version. Stuck on a Malayan rubber plantation with her aloof older husband (Reginald Owen), British subject Leslie Crosbie (Eagels) finds affection...

Bette Davis in a breezy, holiday comedy -- why, yes! In The Man Who Came to Dinner, she plays secretary Maggie Cutler to Monty Woolley's acerbic blowhard Sheridan Whiteside. The film is based on the 1938 play by Kaufman and Hart, and is so full of then-contemporary pop culture references, it's almost like I Love the '30s (and Early '40s). Jimmy Durante plays a character based on Harpo Marx, fictional Beverly Carlton (played by Reginald Gardiner) is shaped on Noel Coward, and Ann Sheridan's Lorraine Sheldon is formed on legendary actress Gertrude Lawrence.

The 1942 movie runs like a play at times; most of the action is based at the home of the wealthy Stanley clan, which you almost pity and dislike at the same time. Whiteside is the "Man" of the title, a radio host and public speaker unafraid to speak his mind to anyone that will listen.