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Receiving the IndieWire Honors Vanguard Award at Citizen News on June 6, Carol Burnett reflected on her years spent as a teenage reporter. The comedy legend further praised journalists as “essential” to the entertainment industry and described the evening as a “full circle” moment in her illustrious career. (Watch her interview on our red carpet above.)

“This actually happens to be the neighborhood I grew up in just a few blocks from here,” Burnett said in her speech. “At one point, I was editor of my Hollywood High School newspaper and one of my assignments was to interview the editor of the Hollywood Citizen News. That was in this building.”

Speaking to IndieWire in May, the actress said that in addition to interviewing Citizen News editor Lowell E. Redelings — who Innovation Award winner John Mulaney would later accuse of Communism during his predictably hilarious acceptance speech — she narrowly missed a chance to speak with Lana Turner.

At the conclusion of Apple TV +’s delightful 2021 musical comedy “Schmigadoon!,” Melissa (Cecily Strong) and Josh (Keegan-Michael Key) realized they loved each other and returned to the real world. The second season finds them blissfully married, but boredom soon sets in. And to add insult to injury, they can’t get pregnant. The two decide they need a boost, so they decide to return to the cotton-candy colored tuneful world of Schmigadoon.

But what they find this time around is Schmicago, a much darker town they can’t leave until they find their happy ending. Happy endings, though, are few and far between in the city that never sleeps. And it certainly looks like the two won’t find one anytime soon after Josh is soon arrested for murdering a showgirl.

Schmicago is Fosse-fied with more than a few jazz hands reflecting the adult musicals of the 1960s and 1970s including “Chicago,...

Archie Mayo’s 1942 film is a tuneful soap opera sustained by a treasure trove of swing era classics courtesy of Glenn Miller and his orchestra. Miller plays a bandleader who finds himself embroiled in a musical hornet’s nest of horny husbands and jealous wives. Ann Rutherford and George Montgomery star as an embattled bride and groom and Jackie Gleason shines in a bit part as Miller’s bass player.

The post Orchestra Wives appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

Let's be fair to Disney/Sony/Fox/whoever they think they are: there's been a DVD release of William Wellman's Roxie Hart (1942), but it's not currently streaming, which is a crying shame. It's a masterpiece, up there with The Public Enemy or Safe in Hell or Midnight Mary, Wellman's excoriating, criminous pre-Codes.The story may be a familiar one: former newspaperwoman Maurine Dallas Watkins' stage hit Chicago was filmed as a Cecil B. DeMille production in 1927, and more recently in musical form with Bob Fosse's choreography put through a blender by Rob Marshall, Harvey Weinstein, and Martin Walsh, who promptly won the Oscar for Most Editing.Our story, and its heroine, are laid in the great city of Chicago in the Roaring Twenties. An opening title solemnly dedicates the picture to all those women who have filled their husbands full of lead out of pique. George Montgomery plays an old newspaperman and then,...

Rex Ingram in 'The Thief of Bagdad' 1940 with tiny Sabu. Actor Rex Ingram movies on TCM: Early black film performer in 'Cabin in the Sky,' 'Anna Lucasta' It's somewhat unusual for two well-known film celebrities, whether past or present, to share the same name.* One such rarity is – or rather, are – the two movie people known as Rex Ingram;† one an Irish-born white director, the other an Illinois-born black actor. Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” continues today, Aug. 11, '15, with a day dedicated to the latter. Right now, TCM is showing Cabin in the Sky (1943), an all-black musical adaptation of the Faust tale that is notable as the first full-fledged feature film directed by another Illinois-born movie person, Vincente Minnelli. Also worth mentioning, the movie marked Lena Horne's first important appearance in a mainstream motion picture.§ A financial disappointment on the...

Audrey Long, actress in B film noirs and Westerns, and widow of author Leslie Charteris, dead at 92 (photo: Audrey Long publicity shot ca. late '40s) Actress Audrey Long, a leading lady in mostly B crime dramas and Westerns of the '40s and early '50s, and the widow of The Saint creator Leslie Charteris, died "after a long illness" on September 19, 2014, in Virginia Water, Surrey, England. Long was 92. Her death was first reported by Ian Dickerson on the website LeslieCharteris.com. Born on April 14 (some sources claim April 12), 1922, in Orlando, Florida, Audrey Long was the daughter of an English-born Episcopal minister, who later became a U.S. Navy Chaplain. Her early years were spent moving about North America, in addition to some time in Honolulu. According to Dickerson's Audrey Long tribute on the Leslie Charteris site, following acting lessons with coach Dorothea Johnson, whose pupils had also included...

By Fred Blosser

Many books have been written about Hollywood Westerns. After 45 years, the late William K. Everson’s “A Pictorial History of the Western Film” (The Citadel Press, 1969) remains one of the best: a coffee-table book with substance. Everson appropriately tips his sombrero to John Ford, John Wayne, Henry Hathaway, and Howard Hawks (with measured praise for “Red River”), and his comments on films spanning the history of the genre up to the end of the 1960s, from “The Great Train Robbery” (1903) to “The Wild Bunch” (1969), are incisive and thought-provoking. As a film scholar and preservationist, Everson was particularly knowledgeable about older and often obscure movies from the silent and early sound eras. Three of the classic titles he highlights are worthy of his approval and deserve to be better known than they are.

King Vidor’s “Billy the Kid” (1930) is slow going at times, particularly if you’re...

By Fred Blosser

In the Old West, small homesteaders run afoul of a big landowner who controls the local law and levies killer taxes on their ranches and farms. The homesteaders finally refuse to pay the taxes, and petition the governor for help. Meanwhile, expecting reprisal from the landowner’s hired guns, they build a makeshift fort for refuge. They also send for help from a mercenary who comes to their aid with his private army of four associates and a Gatling gun.

Just kidding about the Western setting. This is actually the plot of “Gonin No Shokin Kasegi,” also known as “The Fort of Death,” a 1969 Japanese chambara by Eiichi Kudo. Nevertheless, the similarities are there. The homesteaders are peasants, the landowner is their oppressive feudal lord, and the higher official they’ve petitioned is the emperor. It’s easy to squint and superimpose an Old West setting out of an American B movie,...

Gone With The Wind Actress Ann Rutherford Dies. [Photo: Ann Rutherford as Carreen O'Hara, Evelyn Keyes as Suellen O'Hara in Gone with the Wind.]

Ann Rutherford‘s most notable screen roles were in films made away from both MGM and Wallace Beery. She was a young woman who falls for trumpeter George Montgomery in Archie Mayo’s 20th Century Fox musical Orchestra Wives (1942), and became enmeshed with (possibly) amnesiac Tom Conway in Anthony Mann’s Rko thriller Two O’Clock Courage (1945).

Following a couple of minor supporting roles — in the Danny Kaye comedy The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) at Goldwyn and the Errol Flynn costumer The Adventures of Don Juan (1948) at Warner Bros. — and the female lead in the independently made cattle drama Operation Haylift (1950), opposite Bill Williams, Ann Rutherford retired from the screen. (Rutherford would later say that her Operation Haylift experience was anything but pleasant.)

She then turned to television, making regular television appearances in the ’50s (The Donna Reed Show, Playhouse 90,...

Toby Jones/Sienna Miller = Alfred Hitchcock/Tippi Hedren? [Photo: Tippi Hedren / The Birds publicity shot.] Tippi Hedren once told The Times of London that Alfred Hitchcock — for whom she starred in The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964), and with whom she had an exclusive contract — "kept me under contract, kept paying me every week for almost two years to do nothing" after she refused his sexual advances. "I admired Hitch tremendously for his great talent and still do," Hedren told London's Daily Mail. "Yet, at the same time, I loathed him for his off-set behavior and the way he came on to me sexually. He was a great director – and he destroyed it all by his behavior when he got me alone." Hedren had no luck after she rid herself of her Hitchcock ties. She had a small supporting role in Charles Chaplin's box-office and critical flop A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), starring Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren,...

Claudette Colbert, Alla Nazimova, Marion Davies, Charles Boyer: Cinecon 2011 Thursday September 1 (photo: Alla Nazimova) 7:00 Hollywood Rhythm (1934) 7:10 Welcoming Remarks 7:15 Hollywood Story (1951) 77 min. Richard Conte, Julie Adams, Richard Egan. Dir: William Castle. 8:35 Q & A with Julie Adams 9:10 Blazing Days (1927) 60 min. Fred Humes. Dir: William Wyler. 10:20 In The Sweet Pie And Pie (1941) 18 min 10:40 She Had To Eat (1937) 75 min. Jack Haley, Rochelle Hudson, Eugene Pallette. Friday September 2 9:00 Signing Off (1936) 9:20 Moon Over Her Shoulder (1941) 68 min. Dan Dailey, Lynn Bari, John Sutton, Alan Mowbray. 10:40 The Active Life Of Dolly Of The Dailies (1914) 15 min. Mary Fuller. 10:55 Stronger Than Death (1920) 80 min. Alla Nazimova, Charles Bryant. Dir: Herbert Blaché, Charles Bryant, Robert Z. Leonard. 12:15 Lunch Break 1:45 Open Track (1916) 2:00 On The Night Stage (1915) 60 min. William S. Hart, Rhea Mitchell. Dir: Reginald Barker. 3:15 50 Miles From Broadway (1929) 23 min 3:45 Cinerama Adventure (2002). Dir: David Strohmaier. 5:18 Discussion...

Given the success of Warner’s Archive program, we’re thrilled to see other studios scouring their vaults for content aimed at the discerning cinephile. Here’s a release showcasing the latest coming from MGM via Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment:

Los Angeles (April 14, 2011) – Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment is bringing even more classics to DVD in April through its unique “manufacturing on demand” (“Mod”). The newest group of films will be part of the MGM Limited Edition Collection and available through online retailers. The vast catalog ranges from 1980’s Defiance to 1965’s four-time Academy Award® nominated A Thousand Clowns.

Enjoy your favorite movies from across the decades including:

1950′s

● Davey Crockett, Scout (1950): A U.S. military scout is assigned to stop Indian attacks on a defenseless group of wagon trains making their way West. Stars George Montgomery, Ellen Drew, Noah Beery Jr. Directed by Lew Landers.

● Cloudburst...

Your weekly fix of great movies made before you were born that you should check out before you die. This week’s Old Ass Movie celebrates one of the funniest flicks about capital punishment ever made. Roxie Hart takes the wrap for killing her lover so she can make it big in Chicago. Her smooth-talking lawyer promises to get her off and get her out on the town as a starlet, and everyone from the judge to the press seems to be in on the gag. What? You trust everything you read in the papers? What’s a newspaper? Go look it up first and come back to discover how funny hanging someone can be. Roxie Hart (1942) Directed By: William A. Wellman Written By: Nunnally Johnson, adapted from the play “Chicago” by Maurine Dallas Watkins Starring: Ginger Rogers, Adolphe Menjou, George Montgomery, William Frawley, and Lynne Overman In a modern context, Roxie Hart...

If someone were to ask us to name our top ten directors of all time, the name William Castle would sit firmly somewhere within the top five. The man was not only a true showman but also an absolute genius. If we have one regret in our tenure here at Dread Central, it is that we weren't around during Castle's heyday of insane gimmicks. The man was without question the godfather of viral marketing, and it's taken the rest of the industry decades to catch up. If you live somewhere within the Tri-State Region, we have the info on an event that you do Not want to miss!

From the Press Release

The Return Of William Castle, a 15-film festival of horror and exploitation classics by the director and master showman, complete with their original gimmicks (Emergo!, Percepto!, Illusion-o!, and others – including one created exclusively for Film Forum), will run...

On Thursday, March 18, Turner Classic Movies (North America) will present back-to-back films relating to the legend of Wyatt Earp beginning with John Ford's My Darling Clementine at 8:00 Pm (Est). Henry Fonda plays Earp and Victor Mature is Doc Holliday. Following this, John Sturges' classic Gunfight at the O.K. Corral is shown, with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas as Earp and Holliday. Then, Sturges' 1967 sequel Hour of the Gun is shown with James Garner and Robards as the legendary characters. Topping things off is a B Western we've never heard of: Masterson of Kansas, a 1954 oater with George Montgomery in which Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp team up. Interestingly, the film was directed by B horror movie king William Castle. Go figure...