20 Posts – Film (17). Stage (3).
ORCHESTRA WIVES (1942), 20th Century-Fox’s rom-com music film, has first-class swing music from the Glenn Miller Band including that year’s No.1 popular, Academy Award nominated best original song, “(I’ve Got a Gal In) Kalamazoo.” Ann Rutherford and George Montgomery star in a realistic plot about musicians and their wives on tour across wartime America.
FEATURE image: Glenn Miller Orchestra, 1940-41. Public Domain. The 1942 music film, Orchestra Wives, from 20th-Century-Fox is one of the best dance band movies ever made. Between 1934 and 1945 Fox studios made 57 musicals and music films (see – https://www.imdb.com/list/ls565533414/.) While M-G-M is known for its musicals where characters sing and dance in place…
The Beatles’ “When I’m Sixty-Four” was written by Paul McCartney in the 1950’s, re-emerged when his own father Jim turned 64 in 1966, and appeared in 1967 as one of the classic pop songs of the psychedelic era on the LP “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and in 1968 in “Yellow Submarine,” the animated Beatles’ feature film from United Artists and King Features Syndicate.
FEATURE Image: Yellow Submarine was a British cartoon feature film in 1968 starring comic strip figures of the Beatles in a colorful and surrealistic musical adventure featuring Beatles hits. Though it was a box office flop in the U.K., it was wildly successful in the U.S. The film title and concept were based on the…
Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. (1883-1939)
FEATURE image: Douglas Fairbanks, c. 1918. Harris & Ewing, photographer. Collection Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication. Public Domain. By John P. Walsh. Born in Denver in 1883, Douglas Fairbanks’ mother had been married three times before she had him, the younger of two brothers with his father, an East Coast publisher and…
Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977).
FEATURE image: Charles (Charlie) Chaplin (1889-1977), 1918, A Dog’s Life, First National. Public Domain. Twenty-four-year-old Charlie Chaplin was “discovered” in 1913 when he was touring Stateside in an English pantomime, acrobat and clown show troupe. Chaplin signed up to work for $150 a week in Mack Sennett’s Keystone Comedies. It was a definite pay raise…
Set up in 1919 by Hollywood’s elite stars, UNITED ARTISTS movie studio originated many of the industry’s great individual films for decades. Its visionary corporate identity contracted self-financed, self-distributed independent production companies and gave them influence and freedom of artistic expression away from the major studios’ house styles and so invigorated the genre.
FEATURE image: United Artists founders in 1919, (Left to right) Douglas Fairbanks (1883-1939), Mary Pickford (1892-1979). Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) and D.W. Griffith (1875-1948). By John P. Walsh It is debated whose brainchild the United Artists Corporation (UA), founded in 1919, ultimately was. Was it Mary Pickford’s and Douglas Fairbanks’ theatrical lawyer and a later UA…
Mary Pickford (1892-1979).
FEATURE IMAGE: Mary Pickford in 1927 in a publicity photograph for My Best Girl. Notes – https://www.lot-art.com/auction-lots/A-Mary-Pickford-group-of-portraits-and-negatives-by-KO-Rahmn/391-mary_pickford-20.11.18-bonham
I Confess, a 1953 film noir by Alfred Hitchcock features Montgomery Clift as Fr. Logan who is framed for a murder committed by another man whose confession the Catholic priest heard and cannot reveal.
FEATURE image: “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” by twm1340 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. In I Confess, a 1953 film noir by Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) from Warner Bros., a Catholic priest, Fr. Logan (played by Montgomery Clift) hears the confession of a man who works in the rectory and just killed another man. That killer had been dressed as a…
The most performed playwright at the Comédie-Française in 21st century Paris is 17th century Jean-Baptiste Poquelin dit MOLIÈRE (1622-1673).
FEATURE image: Portrait of Molière, c. 1658 , Pierre Mignard (1612-1695), Château de Chantilly. Pierre Mignard is one of the major classic French portrait artists. When he crossed paths with Molière in Avignon in 1658, after having worked in Orange and Saint-Rémy, a great friendship started between the two men, until the death of the…
Celebrating 100 years of The Three Stooges (1922-2022).
FEATURE IMAGE: Jerry (Curley) Howard, Moe Howard and Larry Fine are The Three Stooges. “The Three Stooges” by twm1340 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. The year 2022 marks the 100th anniversary of the start of The Three Stooges in show business. The Stooges began in 1922 as part of a vaudeville act called “Ted Healy and his…
Film Actress and Director, ALICE TERRY (1900-1987), in a 1922 Glamour Photograph by Melbourne Spurr.
FEATURE image: Alice Terry by Melbourne Spurr, 1922. Public Domain. Melbourne Spurr (1888-1964) arrived in Hollywood around 1917 at 28 years old. Spurr first worked at the studio of photographer Fred Hartsook (1876-1930) where he shot portraits of silent film stars. GLAMOUR PHOTOGRAPHER MELBOURNE SPURR’S CAREER LAUNCHED BY SILENT SCREEN STAR MARY PICKFORD After Spurr…
ETHEL BARRYMORE of the legendary Barrymore acting family became a Broadway star in 1901 in the new romantic comedy play, “Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines,” at the Garrick Theatre in New York City.
FEATURE image: Ethel Barrymore on the cover of The Theatre in August 1901 following the close of the successful Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines which ran on Broadway for 168 performances from February to July 1901 and made 22-year-old Ethel Barrymore a star. Public Domain. 22-year-old Ethel Barrymore on stage at the Garrick Theatre…
CARY GRANT in the 1960’s: That Touch of Mink (1962), Charade (1963), Father Goose (1964) and Walk, Don’t Run (1966) and his Courtship, Marriage, and Baby with Dyan Cannon.
FEATURE image: “Cary Grant” by classic film scans is licensed under CC BY 2.0. By John P. Walsh Cary Grant made 72 films in a 34-year Hollywood career. Grant made his last six films in the 1960’s. After a successful acting career spanning four decades—Grant’s film debut was in 1932 for the Paramount Pictures’ comedy…
The World’s Most Beautiful Woman, HEDY LAMARR, featuring her Glamour Portrait by László Willinger for M-G-M’s adventure film, Boom Town (1940).
FEATURE image: Hedy Lamarr, M-G-M, 1940. Photograph by László Willinger (1909-1989). PHOTO credit: Fair use.* Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000) posed for the glamour portrait (above) in 1940. The legendary Austrian beauty in Hollywood was 27 years old. Since her first American film in 1938, Algiers from United Artists, Lamarr was believed to be the most beautiful…
A Critical Look at M-G-M’s MADAME BOVARY (1949) directed by Vincente Minnelli: the Waltz Scene featuring Jennifer Jones and Louis Jourdan.
FEATURE image: Madame Bovary (Jennifer Jones) and Rodolphe Boulanger (Louis Jourdan) waltz at the ball in a still from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s 1949 film Madame Bovary directed by Vincente Minnelli. Fair Use. In the 1949 film Madame Bovary directed by Vincente Minnelli, a beautiful and charming Madame Bovary (Jennifer Jones) meets wealthy Rodolphe Boulanger (Louis Jourdan) at…
MICHÈLE MERCIER: French-Italian Screen Goddess Known As Angélique. A review of her legendary 5-film role that stretched from 1964 to 1968.
FEATURE image: “File:Michelemercier02b.jpg” by Roland Godefroy is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Michèle Mercier (born New Year’s Day 1939) is a French actress perhaps best known for playing the lead role of Angélique in the mid1960s film series of the same name based on the 1956 sensational novel Angélique, the Marquise of the Angels by husband and wife writing…
Fashionable, versatile award-winning Italian film actress CAROLINA CRESCENTINI is always working. Filmography and Commentary.
FEATURE image: “File:Carolina Crescentini.jpg” by Nicogenin is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. Carolina Crescentini is an Italian film and television actress who has appeared in more than 20 films since 2006. Born in Rome in 1980 (April 18) Carolina grew up in the elegant Monteverde Vecchio district. Not unlike Grace Kelly of Philadelphia, Carolina wanted to become…
St. Francis of Assisi and the leper depicted in “The Flowers of St. Francis” (1950) by Italian filmmaker ROBERTO ROSSELLINI (1906-1977).
FEATURE Image: Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman – “Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman” by classic film scans is marked with CC BY 2.0. By John P. Walsh Come la notte Francesco pregando nella selva incontro il lebbroso —or, in English, “How St. Francis praying one night meets a leper.” Starting at 38:15, the dramatic five-minute scene in the middle…
MARLENE DIETRICH, ELIZABETH TAYLOR, LANA TURNER: History of Hollywood Publicity Glamour Portraits in the 1930’s and 1940’s.
FEATURE image: Marlene Dietrich. Paramount, 1947. Photograph by A.L. “Whitey” Schafer. The actress was appearing in Golden Earrings, a 1947 romantic spy film made by Paramount Pictures and starring Ray Milland and Marlene Dietrich.* MARLENE DIETRICH This Hollywood glamour portrait of forty-six-year-old Marlene Dietrich (1901, Berlin – 1992, Paris) wearing a green turtleneck sweater was…
Hollywood Princess: GRACE KELLY (1929-1982), Modeling, Theater, and Film Career, 1946-1956.
FEATURE image: “Grace Kelly 1929 – 1982” by oneredsf1 is marked with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. Philadelphia-born Grace Kelly (1929-1982) had a short but dazzling film career in Hollywood. Called the “Greatest Screen Presence in Film,”1 passionate and dramatically talented Grace Kelly was Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite actress when she starred in three of his classic films of the 1950’s: Dial M For Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954) and To Catch…
Jennifer Jones is Miss Dove in Twentieth Century-Fox’s GOOD MORNING, MISS DOVE!
FEATURE image: Jennifer Jones in Good Morning, Miss Dove! (1955). Movie poster for Henry Koster’s Good Morning, Miss Dove! Starring Jennifer Jones, it was released by 20th Century-Fox the day before Thanksgiving in 1955. Jennifer Jones in Good Morning, Miss Dove! (1955). The 36-year-old actress plays an elderly teacher taken ill at school who, in…
