Edgar G. Ulmer movies on TCM: 'The Black Cat' & 'Detour' Turner Classic Movies' June 2017 Star of the Month is Audrey Hepburn, but Edgar G. Ulmer is its film personality of the evening on June 6. TCM will be presenting seven Ulmer movies from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s, including his two best-known efforts: The Black Cat (1934) and Detour (1945). The Black Cat was released shortly before the officialization of the Christian-inspired Production Code, which would castrate American filmmaking – with a few clever exceptions – for the next quarter of a century. Hence, audiences in spring 1934 were able to witness satanism in action, in addition to other bizarre happenings in an art deco mansion located in an isolated area of Hungary. Sporting a David Bowie hairdo, Boris Karloff is at his sinister best in The Black Cat (“Do you hear that, Vitus? The phone is dead. Even the phone is dead”), ailurophobic (a.
- 6/7/2017
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Comedy actress Alice Howell on the cover of film historian Anthony Slide's latest book: Pioneering funky-haired performer 'could have been Chaplin' – or at the very least another Louise Fazenda. Rediscovering comedy actress Alice Howell: Female performer in movie field dominated by men Early comedy actress Alice Howell is an obscure entity even for silent film aficionados. With luck, only a handful of them will be able to name one of her more than 100 movies, mostly shorts – among them Sin on the Sabbath, A Busted Honeymoon, How Stars Are Made – released between 1914 and 1920. Yet Alice Howell holds (what should be) an important – or at the very least an interesting – place in film history. After all, she was one of the American cinema's relatively few pioneering “funny actresses,” along with the likes of the better-known Flora Finch, Louise Fazenda, and, a top star in her day, Mabel Normand.[1] Also of note,...
- 4/20/2017
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Merle Oberon movies: Mysterious star of British and American cinema. Merle Oberon on TCM: Donning men's clothes in 'A Song to Remember,' fighting hiccups in 'That Uncertain Feeling' Merle Oberon is Turner Classic Movies' Star of the Month of March 2016. The good news: the exquisite (and mysterious) Oberon, whose ancestry has been a matter of conjecture for decades, makes any movie worth a look. The bad news: TCM isn't offering any Oberon premieres despite the fact that a number of the actress' films – e.g., Temptation, Night in Paradise, Pardon My French, Interval – can be tough to find. This evening, March 18, TCM will be showing six Merle Oberon movies released during the first half of the 1940s. Never a top box office draw in the United States, Oberon was an important international star all the same, having worked with many of the top actors and filmmakers of the studio era.
- 3/19/2016
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Marjorie Lord actress ca. early 1950s. Actress Marjorie Lord dead at 97: Best remembered for TV series 'Make Room for Daddy' Stage, film, and television actress Marjorie Lord, best remembered as Danny Thomas' second wife in Make Room for Daddy, died Nov. 28, '15, at her home in Beverly Hills. Lord (born Marjorie Wollenberg on July 26, 1918, in San Francisco) was 97. Marjorie Lord movies After moving with her family to New York, Marjorie Lord made her Broadway debut at age 17 in Zoe Akins' Pulitzer Prize-winning adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel The Old Maid (1935). Lord replaced Margaret Anderson in the role of Tina, played by Jane Bryan – as Bette Davis' out-of-wedlock daughter – in Warner Bros.' 1939 movie version directed by Edmund Goulding. Hollywood offers ensued, resulting in film appearances in a string of low-budget movies in the late 1930s and throughout much of the 1940s, initially (and...
- 12/15/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Marjorie Lord, best known for playing Kathy “Clancy” Williams opposite Danny Thomas on the 1950s and 60s sitcom "Make Room For Daddy" and later the revival "Make Room For Grandaddy" died November 28 from natural causes, the La Times reported. She was 97. Born Marjorie Wollenberg in 1918 in San Francisco, she soon moved to New York City when her father’s job transferred him, and her acting career began young as she made her Broadway debut at 16 in The Old Maid. Though she was…...
- 12/12/2015
- Deadline TV
Marjorie Lord, best known for playing Kathy “Clancy” Williams opposite Danny Thomas on the 1950s and 60s sitcom Make Room For Daddy and later the revival Make Room For Grandaddy died November 28 from natural causes, the L.A. Times reported. She was 97. Born Marjorie Wollenberg in 1918 in San Francisco, she soon moved to New York City when her father’s job transferred him, and her acting career began young as she made her Broadway debut at 16 in The Old Maid. Though she was…...
- 12/12/2015
- Deadline
Coleen Gray actress ca. 1950. Coleen Gray: Actress in early Stanley Kubrick film noir, destroyer of men in cult horror 'classic' Actress Coleen Gray, best known as the leading lady in Stanley Kubrick's film noir The Killing and – as far as B horror movie aficionados are concerned – for playing the title role in The Leech Woman, died at age 92 in Aug. 2015. This two-part article, which focuses on Gray's film career, is a revised and expanded version of the original post published at the time of her death. Born Doris Bernice Jensen on Oct. 23, 1922, in Staplehurst, Nebraska, at a young age she moved with her parents, strict Lutheran Danish farmers, to Minnesota. After getting a degree from St. Paul's Hamline University, she relocated to Southern California to be with her then fiancé, an army private. At first, she eked out a living as a waitress at a La Jolla hotel...
- 10/14/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Coleen Gray actress ca. 1950. Coleen Gray: Actress in early Stanley Kubrick film noir, destroyer of men in cult horror 'classic' Actress Coleen Gray, best known as the leading lady in Stanley Kubrick's film noir The Killing and – as far as B horror movie aficionados are concerned – for playing the title role in The Leech Woman, died at age 92 in Aug. 2015. This two-part article, which focuses on Gray's film career, is a revised and expanded version of the original post published at the time of her death. Born Doris Bernice Jensen on Oct. 23, 1922, in Staplehurst, Nebraska, at a young age she moved with her parents, strict Lutheran Danish farmers, to Minnesota. After getting a degree from St. Paul's Hamline University, she relocated to Southern California to be with her then fiancé, an army private. At first, she eked out a living as a waitress at a La Jolla hotel...
- 10/14/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
'Sorrell and Son' with H.B. Warner and Alice Joyce. 'Sorrell and Son' 1927 movie: Long thought lost, surprisingly effective father-love melodrama stars a superlative H.B. Warner Partially shot on location in England and produced independently by director Herbert Brenon at Joseph M. Schenck's United Artists, the 1927 Sorrell and Son is a skillful melodrama about paternal devotion in the face of both personal and social adversity. This long-thought-lost version of Warwick Deeping's 1925 bestseller benefits greatly from the veteran Brenon's assured direction, deservedly shortlisted in the first year of the Academy Awards.* Crucial to the film's effectiveness, however, is the portrayal of its central character, a war-scarred Englishman who sacrifices it all for the happiness of his son. Luckily, the London-born H.B. Warner, best remembered for playing Jesus Christ in another 1927 release, Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings, is the embodiment of honesty, selflessness, and devotion. Less is...
- 10/9/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Cinema Enthusiast double features Bette Davis & Miriam Hopkins in The Old Maid (1939) and Old Acquaintance(1943)
The Dissolve this sounds potentially amazing: Jonny Greenwood will play his score to live screenings of There Will Be Blood this summer and fall
Comics Alliance a brief very selective snapshot of Spider-Man convoluted history
Mnpp says good morning to Rami Malek (The Master, Short Term 12). What do you make of him? I haven't yet formed an opinion. No discernible projected persona yet though that could well be an advantage at this early stage of his career.
/Film Joe Quesada talks about planning for binge-watching in series construction with Marvel's Daredevil series (due in 2015)
Playbill because all big 80s and 90s movie hits will eventually become stage musicals (only 107 left to go), 2015 will bring us Bull Durham. If it's any good expect whoever plays Annie Savoy to win the Tony like Susan Sarandon shoulda...
The Dissolve this sounds potentially amazing: Jonny Greenwood will play his score to live screenings of There Will Be Blood this summer and fall
Comics Alliance a brief very selective snapshot of Spider-Man convoluted history
Mnpp says good morning to Rami Malek (The Master, Short Term 12). What do you make of him? I haven't yet formed an opinion. No discernible projected persona yet though that could well be an advantage at this early stage of his career.
/Film Joe Quesada talks about planning for binge-watching in series construction with Marvel's Daredevil series (due in 2015)
Playbill because all big 80s and 90s movie hits will eventually become stage musicals (only 107 left to go), 2015 will bring us Bull Durham. If it's any good expect whoever plays Annie Savoy to win the Tony like Susan Sarandon shoulda...
- 5/12/2014
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
The silent screen legend, appearing in The Old Maid at the Manchester Opera House, says she finds theatre 'much more important and thrilling' than film
Miss Irene Vanbrugh and Miss Lillian Gish, who are appearing in "The Old Maid" at the Opera House, Manchester, were guests at luncheon yesterday of the Town and Counties Club. Miss Vanbrugh is, in fact, a member of the club. "It is," she averred, "the only club I belong to and the only one I shall ever belong to."
Miss Gish, at the invitation of the chairman, Mrs. Harold Baerlein, gave her reasons for reverting from the cinema to the stage. She explained that it was interesting and exciting to turn to something new after years of work in one particular sphere. She was on the stage as a child of five, and "went into the movies" in their early days. "We thought the silent films had a universal language,...
Miss Irene Vanbrugh and Miss Lillian Gish, who are appearing in "The Old Maid" at the Opera House, Manchester, were guests at luncheon yesterday of the Town and Counties Club. Miss Vanbrugh is, in fact, a member of the club. "It is," she averred, "the only club I belong to and the only one I shall ever belong to."
Miss Gish, at the invitation of the chairman, Mrs. Harold Baerlein, gave her reasons for reverting from the cinema to the stage. She explained that it was interesting and exciting to turn to something new after years of work in one particular sphere. She was on the stage as a child of five, and "went into the movies" in their early days. "We thought the silent films had a universal language,...
- 3/17/2014
- The Guardian - Film News
Wallace Beery movies: TCM offers a glimpse into Beery’s extensive filmography (photo: Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery in ‘Min and Bill’) According to the IMDb, the Wallace Beery Filmography features nearly 240 movie titles, including shorts and features, spanning more than three decades, from 1913 to 1949 — the year of his death at age 64. You’ll be able to catch about a dozen of these Wallace Beery movies on Saturday, August 17, 2013, as Turner Classic Movies continues with its "Summer Under the Stars" series. (See “TCM movie schedule: Wallace Beery from Pancho Villa to Long John Silver.”) Wallace Beery, much like fellow veteran Marie Dressler, with whom he co-starred in Min and Bill and its sequel, Tugboat Annie, was a Hollywood anomaly. At age 45, the ugly, coarse-looking actor became a top box-office draw in the United States after languishing in supporting roles, usually playing villains, throughout most of the silent era. Beery and Dressler,...
- 8/17/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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...
- 5/24/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Ann Sothern, Linda Darnell, Jeanne Crain, A Letter to Three Wives Linda Darnell, the gorgeous leading lady of numerous 20th Century Fox productions of the '40s, is Turner Classic Movies' "Summer Under the Stars" player this Saturday, August 27. TCM, which has leased titles from the Fox library, is showing 14 Linda Darnell movies, including no less than 9 TCM premieres. [Linda Darnell Movie Schedule.] Right now, TCM is showing writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz's A Letter to Three Wives (1949), winner of Academy Awards for Best Direction and Best Screenplay. This curious comedy-drama about a husband who leaves his wife for another woman — but whose husband? Linda Darnell's, Jeanne Crain's, or Ann Sothern's? — also earned Mankiewicz the very first Directors Guild of America Award and a Writers Guild Award (which Mankiewicz shared with Vera Caspary) for the Best Written American Comedy. The husbands in question are Kirk Douglas, Paul Douglas, and Jeffrey Lynn.
- 8/28/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Bette Davis on TCM: The Old Maid, Now, Voyager, The Working Man Bette Davis has a cameo in John Paul Jones (1959), which happens to be an insufferable bore despite the presence of Robert Stack in the title role, and she plays second banana to Spencer Tracy in the run-of-the-Warners-mill prison drama 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932), but she is at the center of The Corn Is Green (1945) as Miss Lily Moffat, a teacher in a poor Welsh mining town. Now, Voyager's Irving Rapper directed this film adaptation of Emlyn Williams' semi-autobiographical play — and it shows. Davis is a little too stiff in Ethel Barrymore's Broadway role, John Dall fails to convey his character's emotional turmoil, the dialogue has a theatrical lilt to it, and for the most part the potentially compelling drama feels stilted. Had William Wyler directed The Corn Is Green, it would have been a fantastic movie.
- 8/3/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Miriam Hopkins, Bette Davis, The Old Maid Bette Davis, Warner Bros.' top female box-office attraction from the mid-'30s to the late '40s, is Turner Classic Movies' "Summer Under the Stars" performer-of-the-day this Wednesday, August 3. TCM will be presenting 12 Bette Davis movies, in addition to the 2005 documentary Stardust: The Bette Davis Story. [Bette Davis Movie Schedule.] Unfortunately, none of TCM's Bette Davis movies is a local premiere. So, don't expect anything rare like The Bad Sister, Seed, The Menace, or Way Back Home. Or, for that matter, Connecting Rooms, Bunny O'Hare, The Scientific Cardplayer, or Wicked Stepmother. (Luigi Comencini's The Scientific Cardplayer, co-starring Alberto Sordi, Joseph Cotten, and Silvana Mangano, is an interesting film; hopefully TCM will get a hold of it one of these days.) Anyhow, at least there's the little-known The Working Man (1933), a perfectly enjoyable Depression Era comedy-drama starring a surprisingly effective George Arliss as a big businessman who,...
- 8/3/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Versatile French actor whose work ranged from popular comedy to melodrama
Annie Girardot, who has died aged 79 after suffering from Alzheimer's disease, was an extremely versatile performer whose distinguished career stretched from the Comédie-Française, through popular comedies and melodramas to the French New Wave and beyond. Jean Cocteau, in whose play La Machine à Ecrire (The Typewriter) she starred, called her "the finest dramatic temperament of the postwar period". Hardly ever considered a sex goddess like her near contemporaries Jeanne Moreau and Brigitte Bardot, the petite Girardot, with her strongly etched features, often set off by short hair, and a warm deep voice was, nevertheless, able to create an erotic charge when needed.
Ironically, following her screen debut in 1956, and after nine French films in four years, she came to international prominence when her voice was dubbed into Italian in Luchino Visconti's Rocco e i Suoi Fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers,...
Annie Girardot, who has died aged 79 after suffering from Alzheimer's disease, was an extremely versatile performer whose distinguished career stretched from the Comédie-Française, through popular comedies and melodramas to the French New Wave and beyond. Jean Cocteau, in whose play La Machine à Ecrire (The Typewriter) she starred, called her "the finest dramatic temperament of the postwar period". Hardly ever considered a sex goddess like her near contemporaries Jeanne Moreau and Brigitte Bardot, the petite Girardot, with her strongly etched features, often set off by short hair, and a warm deep voice was, nevertheless, able to create an erotic charge when needed.
Ironically, following her screen debut in 1956, and after nine French films in four years, she came to international prominence when her voice was dubbed into Italian in Luchino Visconti's Rocco e i Suoi Fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers,...
- 3/2/2011
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
The Rules of the Game by Jean Renoir Film Gone with the Wind d: Victor Fleming; scr: Sidney Howard Le Jour se lève / Daybreak d: Marcel Carné; scr: Jacques Viot, Jacques Prévert Midnight d: Mitchell Leisen; scr: Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett Mr. Smith Goes to Washington d: Frank Capra; scr: Sidney Buchman Ninotchka d: Ernst Lubitsch; scr: Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch The Old Maid d: Edmund Goulding; scr: Casey Robinson The Rains Came d: Clarence Brown; scr: Philip Dunne, Julien Josephson La Règle du jeu / The Rules of the Game d: Jean Renoir; scr: Jean Renoir, Carl Koch The Women d: George Cukor; scr: Anita Loos, Jane Murfin Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon in Wuthering Heights Check These Out Bachelor Mother d: Garson Kanin; scr: Norman Krasna Beau Geste d: William A. Wellman; scr: Robert Carson Hello Janine d: Carl Boese; scr: Hans Fritz Beckmann, Karl Georg Külb The...
- 5/10/2009
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Jane Bryan, who played ingenues in several Warner Bros. productions of the late 1930s, died on April 8 at her home in Pebble Beach, California, following a long illness. She was 90. The Los Angeles-born (on June 11, 1918) Jane O’Brien had her name changed to Jane Bryan after landing a Warners contract in the mid ’30s. Bryan’s most notable role at the studio was as Paul Muni’s mistress in We Are Not Alone (1939), directed by Edmund Goulding. Apart from that, she was usually seen as forgettable sweet young things, supporting Bette Davis in Marked Woman (1937), Kid Galahad (1937), The Sisters (1938), and The Old Maid (1939); Edward G. Robinson in A Slight Case of Murder (1938); and Kay Francis in Confession (1937). Bryan also appeared in the popular B comedies Brother Rat (1938) and Brother Rat and a Baby (1940), playing opposite fellow contract players Priscilla Lane, Wayne Morris, Eddie Albert, Ronald Reagan, and Jane Wyman. Her...
- 4/12/2009
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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