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One of Vincente Minnelli’s best is this glamorous ‘Hollywood Looks At Hollywood’ exposé of sin and conniving among the actors, directors and producers that make Quality Entertainment for us unglamorous nobodies. It’s overstated and often grossly overacted but still carries a grandiose charm. Lana Turner gets to play an idealized version of herself. Gloria Grahame generates additional heat, and for her trouble walked away with an Oscar. And composer David Raksin contributes one of his most melodic music scores — the main theme is a winner, right up there with his Laura. CineSavant runs amuck critiquing the way MGM’s movie slams Hollywood creatives, while pretending that the studio bigwigs are infallible Gods.

The Bad and the Beautiful

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1952 / B&w / 1:37 flat Academy / 118 min. / Street Date November 19, 2019 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Lana Turner, Kirk Douglas, Walter Pidgeon, Dick Powell, Barry Sullivan, Gloria Grahame, Gilbert Roland,...

William Wyler and a trio of fantastic actors make indelible movie history from a grim story by Henry James. How much of love is bald opportunism? How many successes married their way into money? And what’s a lovesick woman to do when a beau may not be true? This may be the key Wyler picture, with the strongest ‘staircase’ scene of them all.

The Heiress

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 974

1949 / B&W / 1:37 flat full frame / 116 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date , 2019 / 39.95

Starring: Olivia de Havilland, Montgomery Clift, Ralph Richardson, Miriam Hopkins, Vanessa Brown.

Cinematography: Leo Tover

Film Editor: William Hornbeck

Original Music: Aaron Copland

Written by Ruth and Agustus Goetz from their play, from the book by Henry James

Produced and Directed by William Wyler

One of Hollywood’s finest directors, William Wyler turned out a high percentage of bona fide classics, distinguished adaptations of books and plays.

Updated: Following a couple of Julie London Westerns*, Turner Classic Movies will return to its July 2017 Star of the Month presentations. On July 27, Ronald Colman can be seen in five films from his later years: A Double Life, Random Harvest (1942), The Talk of the Town (1942), The Late George Apley (1947), and The Story of Mankind (1957). The first three titles are among the most important in Colman's long film career. George Cukor's A Double Life earned him his one and only Best Actor Oscar; Mervyn LeRoy's Random Harvest earned him his second Best Actor Oscar nomination; George Stevens' The Talk of the Town was shortlisted for seven Oscars, including Best Picture. All three feature Ronald Colman at his very best. The early 21st century motto of international trendsetters, from Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro and Turkey's Recep Erdogan to Russia's Vladimir Putin and the United States' Donald Trump, seems to be, The world is reality TV and reality TV...

Teresa Wright in 'Shadow of a Doubt': Alfred Hitchcock heroine (image: Joseph Cotten about to strangle Teresa Wright in 'Shadow of a Doubt') (See preceding article: "Teresa Wright Movies: Actress Made Oscar History.") After scoring with The Little Foxes, Mrs. Miniver, and The Pride of the Yankees, Teresa Wright was loaned to Universal – once initial choices Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland became unavailable – to play the small-town heroine in Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. (Check out video below: Teresa Wright reminiscing about the making of Shadow of a Doubt.) Co-written by Thornton Wilder, whose Our Town had provided Wright with her first chance on Broadway and who had suggested her to Hitchcock; Meet Me in St. Louis and Junior Miss author Sally Benson; and Hitchcock's wife, Alma Reville, Shadow of a Doubt was based on "Uncle Charlie," a story outline by Gordon McDonell – itself based on actual events.

Stars and casts from the current Broadway line-up have been busy in the studio, recording for the 2013 Broadway's Carols for a Cure, Volume 15. Singing traditional and original holiday songs, this annual holiday music CD benefits Broadway CaresEquity Fights AIDS Bcefa, one of the nation's leading industry-based, nonprofit AIDS fundraising and grant-making organizations. Below, BroadwayWorld brings you exclusive photos from Newsies' recording session for 'Take Me to Manhattan in December' with castmembers Hogan Fulton, Tommy Martinez, Stuart Marland, Andy Richardson, Iain Young, John Michael Fiumara, Evan Kasprzak, Mark Aldrick, Joshua Colley, Luca Padovan, Joshua Colley, Luca Padovan, Liana Hunt, Kara Lindsay, Vanessa Brown and Julie Foldesi.

Jeanne Crain: Lighthearted movies vs. real life tragedies (photo: Madeleine Carroll and Jeanne Crain in ‘The Fan’) (See also: "Jeanne Crain: From ‘Pinky’ Inanity to ‘Margie’ Magic.") Unlike her characters in Margie, Home in Indiana, State Fair, Centennial Summer, The Fan, and Cheaper by the Dozen (and its sequel, Belles on Their Toes), or even in the more complex A Letter to Three Wives and People Will Talk, Jeanne Crain didn’t find a romantic Happy Ending in real life. In the mid-’50s, Crain accused her husband, former minor actor Paul Brooks aka Paul Brinkman, of infidelity, of living off her earnings, and of brutally beating her. The couple reportedly were never divorced because of their Catholic faith. (And at least in the ’60s, unlike the humanistic, progressive-thinking Margie, Crain was a “conservative” Republican who supported Richard Nixon.) In the early ’90s, she lost two of her...

Lana Turner movies: Scandal and more scandal Lana Turner is Turner Classic Movies’ "Summer Under the Stars" star today, Saturday, August 10, 2013. I’m a little — or rather, a lot — late in the game posting this article, but there are still three Lana Turner movies left. You can see Turner get herself embroiled in scandal right now, in Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life (1959), both the director and the star’s biggest box-office hit. More scandal follows in Mark Robson’s Peyton Place (1957), the movie that earned Lana Turner her one and only Academy Award nomination. And wrapping things up is George Sidney’s lively The Three Musketeers (1948), with Turner as the ruthless, heartless, remorseless — but quite elegant — Lady de Winter. Based on Fannie Hurst’s novel and a remake of John M. Stahl’s 1934 melodrama about mother love, class disparities, racism, and good cooking, Imitation of Life was shown on...

Actor who cheerfully exploited Hollywood's conception of French glamour

In the 1950s, Denise Darcel, who has died aged 87, profited from Hollywood's "ooh-la-la" conception of young, shapely French womanhood, generally inviting the adjective "sultry" and playing characters called Fifi, Gigi and Lola. In fact, her entire acting career was spent in America, cheerfully exploiting that image.

She was born Denise Billecard in Paris, one of five daughters of a baker and his wife. After studying at the University of Dijon, she returned to Paris, where she won the title of "most beautiful girl in France". Making the most of the publicity, she built up a nightclub act as a dancer and singer.

In 1947, in Paris, she met and married an American army captain, who returned to the Us with her. The marriage lasted for less than a year. With her name changed to the easier-to-pronounce Darcel, she landed an uncredited spot...

Actor often seen in unsympathetic roles

Although she rarely had a leading role, the actor Neva Patterson, who has died aged 90, made the most of the parts she was given. She had a great line in cold, uptight, probably sexually repressed women. In the romantic comedy An Affair to Remember (1957), she played an heiress, Lois Clark, waiting on the dock in New York for a playboy (Cary Grant) to arrive from Europe to marry her. But she had not reckoned that he might have fallen for another woman (Deborah Kerr) on board. Although her character is spoilt and controlling, Patterson elicited some sympathy as Lois gradually realises that she is losing her fiance.

To a degree, Patterson was typecast in the movies. In the delightful comedy The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956), she is Judy Holliday's prim secretary, with her hair in a bun and dressed in a severe suit. Holliday...