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Oh Dear! What Can the Matter Be?
“Oh dear! What can the matter be? Dear! Dear! What can the matter be? Oh Dear! What can the matter be? Johnny’s so long at the fair. He promised he’d buy me a fairing should please me, And then for a...
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Show of Hands: the Lost Art of Horror Movie Poster Hysteria
Some of us fellers were idling around the Internet water cooler earlier this week and the subject came up of movie posters of ye olde days and how women depicted on them were always throwing up their...
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The Hawks Report: When Howard met Lauren
Once upon a time, there was a pretty girl. As has happened to many other pretty girls, other people liked to take pictures of her—and one of these pictures ended up in a magazine read by one of the...
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The Gifted and Talented Mr. Cregar
Today is the 100th birthday of Laird Cregar, a great actor that left this world far too early, at the age of only 31, in 1944, just two months before the release of his greatest acting triumph,...
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Happy Birthday William Powell
To look at a photo of William Powell is to gaze upon a man with narrow shoulders, a lean physique, heavily lidded eyes, a large nose, and a weak chin. Like other male movie stars from the Golden Age,...
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On the Cheap: Hollywood Boulevard (1976)
Roger Corman’s career would be impossible today. There is no more infrastructure for low-budget genre experimentation, as filmmakers must increasingly rely on crowd-funding to get their modest projects...
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Like a Rock
There are plenty of actors throughout Hollywood history that are better known for their celebrity than their acting chops. Many of them are fine actors, too, it’s just that their celebrity got noticed...
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The Movie Stars Next Door
I have the great pleasure of living in the Napa Valley where it’s not uncommon to see locals sporting cowboy hats and where pig races still make headline news. Besides all the wine producing vineyards,...
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Let Them Live!
Earlier this week I was writing up for TCM a movie starring Ramon Novarro, the former MGM top draw, to be broadcast during August’s “Summer Under the Stars.” I tend to be a little anally comprehensive...
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The Hawks Report #2: The Gift That Keeps On Giving
He sat in the audience of High Noon, fuming. He didn’t like the way Gary Cooper slunk through the town unable to muster any allies for his heroic stand against Evil. He thought it was unmanly. And...
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Laughton’s Choice
Tonight on TCM, The Ruggles of Red Gap plays at eight as a part of Mary Boland’s Summer Under the Stars Day. Boland was a great character actress, to be sure, but the real reason I mention The...
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Forgotten Films to Remember: ‘Finishing School’
In the last 10 years, the popularity of pre-Code movies has soared through the publication of coffee-table books and the release of DVD series. “Pre-Code” refers to those films released before film...
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The Bitter Noirs of Mark Stevens: Cry Vengeance (’54) and Timetable (’56)
Second-tier actor Mark Stevens directed two first-rate film noirs in the 1950s, Cry Vengeance (1954) and Timetable (1956). Made when his acting career was in decline, these are self-lacerating works in...
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Fred MacMurray: The Perfect Heel
A Friendly Warning: Spoilers Lurk Within Today is Fred MacMurray’s day here at TCM and certainly he was a fine actor, famous for so many great performances and yet so undervalued by his peers in his...
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Telefilm Time Machine: Steven Spielberg’s SOMETHING EVIL (1972)
I recently sat through James Wan’s THE CONJURING (2013). I haven’t particularly liked anything else the director’s done but being a horror film aficionado myself, I assumed that all the critical praise...
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Who’s that knocking on my door? GASP! It’s The Uninvited (1944)!
With James Wan’s recent haunted houser THE CONJURING (2012) scaring up all kinds of big business at the boo-xoffice lately, I’ve had occasion to opine, mostly to the open air of my empty house and in...
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The Hawks Report #3: Loves of a Blonde
It takes many people to make a movie. There are hairdressers and set dressers, designers and gaffers, caterers and stand-ins. But never mind—in the public imagination it all comes down to the...
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Fail Safe and the Fear of Losing it All
When I was first reading about movies, back in the seventies, that I hadn’t seen yet (which were many), I let film books be my critical guide. After all, with no videos or cable or DVDs, I had no...
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Karen Black in ‘Burnt Offerings’
Obituaries for actress Karen Black, who died at 74 on August 8 from a rare form of cancer, tended to sum up her contribution to American cinema by noting her Oscar-nominated role as Rayette Dipesto in...
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Opposite Directions: Going Hollywood (1933)
Going Hollywood (1933) was a gambit by William Randolph Heart to rejuvenate his lover Marion Davies’ career, but instead it accelerated the rise of Bing Crosby. By the end of 1933 Crosby was a top-ten...
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