Jessie Ralph

Jessie Ralph

Agustus 29, 2007
After the Thin Man, Camille, George M. Cohan, Greta Garbo, Jessie Ralph, San Francisco, The Bank Dick, W.C. Fields

Jessie Ralph was born during the American Civil War and died during World War II. She appeared on Broadway in many of George M. Cohan’s sho...

San Francisco (1936) - Part 2

San Francisco (1936) - Part 2

Agustus 28, 2007
Clark Gable, Jack Holt, Jeannette MacDonald, Jessie Ralph, Margaret Irving, San Francisco

See Part 1 of "San Francisco" here. MacDonald spends much of the movie torn between a choice of Gable or Holt, and it is Burley’s ...

San Francisco (1936) - Part 1

San Francisco (1936) - Part 1

Agustus 27, 2007
Clark Gable, Jack Holt, Jeannette MacDonald, San Francisco, Spencer Tracy, Ted Healy, Tommy Bupp

“San Francisco” (1936) recreates the raucous turn-of-the-20th Century Barbary Coast before our eyes with affectionate detail, and then dest...

Going to the Movies - Two B-Horror Films

Going to the Movies - Two B-Horror Films

Agustus 23, 2007
Boris Karloff, Elisha Cook Jr., House on Haunted Hill, Jack Nicholson, now playing, Richard Long, The Terror, Vincent Price

Two recent trips to the movies brought an interesting perspective. The first trip to see a current feature film was enjoyable enough, despi...

Tex Rides with the Boy Scouts (1937)

Tex Rides with the Boy Scouts (1937)

Agustus 22, 2007
B-westerns, Great Depression, Horace Murphy, Marjorie Reynolds, Phillip Ahn, Snub Pollard, Tex Rides with the Boy Scouts, Tex Ritter, Tommy Bupp

“Tex Rides with the Boy Scouts” (1937) stars Tex Ritter, his horse “White Flash”, and features Marjorie Reynolds, who later went on to a bet...

Alan Reed - 100th Anniversary

Alan Reed - 100th Anniversary

Agustus 20, 2007
Alan Reed, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Here Comes the Groom, The Desperate Hours, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Viva Zapata

A nod today to Alan Reed, on the 100th anniversary of his birth. Before you say “Fred Flintstone,” remember that Mr. Reed was a prolific te...

All Aboard - Trains in the Movies

All Aboard - Trains in the Movies

Agustus 16, 2007
42nd Street, Movie Maniacs, Shadow of a Doubt, Since You Went Away, Sullivans Travels, The Great Train Robbery, The Harvey Girls, The Thin Man Goes Home, The Three Stooges, White Christmas

The movies began with “The Great Train Robbery,” (1903) a film that lasted all of ten minutes and gave birth to our fascination with the fli...

Everybody Comes to Rick's

Everybody Comes to Rick's

Agustus 15, 2007
Casablanca, Conrad Veidt, Curt Bois, Hans Twardowski, Helmut Dantine, Ilka Grunig, Ludwig Stossel, Madeleine LeBeau, Marcel Dalio, Richard Ryen, S. Z. Sakall, World War II

A pivotal moment in the film “Casablanca” (1942) occurs when Major Strasser and the other Nazis are drowned out in their singing of “Die Wac...

Now Playing - October 1942

Now Playing - October 1942

Agustus 14, 2007
My Sister Eileen, now playing, Rosalind Russell, Ruth McKenney, Wonderful Town

“My Sister Eileen” has had many incarnations. It started as a series of short stories published in The New Yorker magazine by Ruth McKenney,...

The Undersea Kingdom (1936)

The Undersea Kingdom (1936)

Agustus 13, 2007
Crash Corrigan, Lon Chaney Jr, Monte Blue, movie serials, Smiley Burnette, The Undersea Kingdom

“The Undersea Kingdom” (1936) - Chapter 10, to be precise, is a sliver of a serial produced by Republic in the days when kids would have to ...

What's Opera, Doc? (1957)

What's Opera, Doc? (1957)

Agustus 09, 2007
Arthur Q. Bryan, Baton Bunny, Bugs Bunny, cartoons, Chuck Jones, Elmer Fudd, Franz von Suppe, Gioachino Rossini, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Mel Blanc, Michael Maltese, Richard Wagner, What's Opera Doc

“What’s Opera Doc?” (1957) achieved what few parodies can do, and that is to create something original on its own, a genius apart from the p...

Harry Davenport

Harry Davenport

Agustus 08, 2007
Gone With the Wind, Harry Davenport, Judy Garland, Meet Me In St. Louis, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), The Ox-Bow Incident

Harry Davenport was born in 1866, the year after the American Civil War ended, and his last film was made in 1950, when television had alrea...

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) - Part 2

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) - Part 2

Agustus 07, 2007
Charles Laughton, Production Code, superstition, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), Walter Hampden

We have stories within stories, where Esmeralda is loved by the poet Gringoire, but loves the soldier Phoebus instead. When Phoebus is kille...

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) - Part 1

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) - Part 1

Agustus 06, 2007
Cedric Hardwicke, Charles Laughton, Harry Davenport, Maureen O'Hara, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), Victor Hugo

“The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1939) has a very literate script as a foundation and from this beginning, taken from the Victor Hugo novel, s...

Sabrina (1954) - Part 2

Sabrina (1954) - Part 2

Agustus 02, 2007
Audrey Hepburn, Emory Parnell, Hubert de Givenchy, Humphrey Bogart, Sabrina, Samuel Taylor, Walter Hampden, William Holden

When Sabrina attends the party in probably the most fantastic gown ever created for the movies, the butler, played by Emory Parnell, gushing...

Sabrina (1954) - Part 1

Sabrina (1954) - Part 1

Agustus 01, 2007
Audrey Hepburn, Billy Wilder, Humphrey Bogart, John Williams, Sabrina, The African Queen, William Holden

“Sabrina” (1954) is deceptively a watershed film. Deceptively because it is simply a Cinderella story, nothing unusual about that, but one ...