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Back in 2016, Moma curator Dave Kehr programmed a series of restorations and rediscoveries from the early days of sound at Universal Studios. Across the country in Los Angeles, film historian Leonard Maltin looked at the schedule with envy and longing. “My mouth was watering,” Maltin told IndieWire. “I was so frustrated that I couldn’t just fly to New York and set up a futon in the lobby so I could go to all the films he was screening.”

Luckily, Maltin was able to see some of the films back in Hollywood when Universal archivist Bob O’Neil allowed him to sit in on screenings that had been set up to check answer prints. “I saw dozens of them,” Maltin said. “Some were good, many were unmemorable or downright bad, but every now and then I got lucky and found a real winner.”

Maltin wanted to share his discoveries with the Los Angeles film community,...

“It Happened One Night,” which premiered at Radio City Music Hall on Feb. 22, 1934, helped usher in the screwball romantic comedy, changed the careers of stars Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, director Frank Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin and transformed the Poverty Row Columbia Pictures into a major player. And let’s not forget, “It Happened One Night” also made Oscar history winning five major Oscars: picture, director, adapted screenplay and both actor and actress. It would be 41 years before “One Flew of the Cuckoo’s Nest” would accomplish the same feat at the Academy Awards.

Based on the short story “Night Bus,” the smart, endearing road movie focuses on spoiled rotten Ellie Andrews (Colbert) who has gone against her wealthy father’s (Walter Connelly) wishes by marrying the gold-digging King Westley (Jameson Thomas). Before their wedding night, her father whisked her away to his yacht in Florida. She manages to...

The owner may be a real Grinch, but Max has some pretty magical presents to offer subscribers this holiday season.

Every year sees new Christmas movies pumped out to meet the insatiable demand of the Yuletide-obsessed. But the holidays are more often a time when people revisit the classics from their childhood or someone else’s, and it’s no surprise that Max and its deep film library — thanks to Warner Bros. Discovery’s Turner Classic Movie collection — has pound for pound the most seasonal mainstays of any streamer.

The riches of the platform include Golden Age of Hollywood favorites like “The Shop Around the Corner.” Lesser known than James Stewart ‘s other Christmas movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the Budapest-set film about two warring coworkers who fall in love as pen pals is a real holiday treat with gorgeous, spiky chemistry between Stewart and his costar Margaret Sullavan. Also...

Sam Heughan, Priyanka Chopra Jonas in Love Again Image: Screen Gems There are a number of positive things that can be said about Love Again. It is always in focus. Bucking the current trend toward cinematic bloat, it manages to keep its running time below an hour and 45 minutes (albeit...

Sam Heughan, Priyanka Chopra Jonas in Love AgainImage: Screen Gems

There are a number of positive things that can be said about Love Again. It is always in focus. Bucking the current trend toward cinematic bloat, it manages to keep its running time below an hour and 45 minutes (albeit just...

Romantic comedies have been around since the beginning of the film industry, but they’ve had a bit of an up-and-down run over the years. From their heyday in the 1990s to Netflix’s recent efforts to bring them back into mainstream popularity, we thought it was time to take stock and make a list of the ten best romantic comedies ever.

Related: 10 Best Comedies of All Time, Ranked by Viewers

We compiled a top 10 list and crunched numbers until we arrived at our ultimate list. As you’ll see below, this is an eclectic mix that includes everything from black-and-white classics to modern blockbusters. Each one fits the American Film Institute’s definition—a genre in which “the development of a romance leads to comic situations”—but more importantly, they’re all funny movies with romantic happy endings.

10 Highest-Rated Romantic Comedies on IMDb The Artist (2011) – 7.9 The Shop Around the Corner...

Despite allegedly scaring Alfred Hitchcock with his yelling, James Stewart really did live up to his polite everyman reputation. He's one of the biggest stars in Hollywood history and yet retained humility throughout his decades-long career, even finding time to rise up the ranks of the military and fight in World War II between starring in some of the biggest movies of his day. He passed away in 1997 having built a career full of classic movie moments and never once tarnished his reputation as a class act (Hitchcock probably deserved some dressing down). In fact, beyond being self-effacing, Stewart was known for being quite shy off-screen — a trait that, every now and then, would seemingly trip him up on set.

So it was with 1940's "The Philadelphia Story" — a vehicle for Katherin Hepburn's comeback after the actress found herself on Harry Brandt's infamous "box office poison list." Her turn...

Ernst Lubitsch's 1940 Christmas comedy "The Shop Around The Corner" has a bit of everything: petty workplace drama, an affair, and a most unlikely romance, making for a combination that is both sweet and acidic at once. Everything in it is graced with the so-called "Lubitsch touch," a precise set of innuendo and body language that turns funny or sentimental material into something far greater, and the warmth and melancholy of the holiday only heighten that complex feeling. It also is probably the second-best James Stewart-led Christmas movie, just beneath "It's a Wonderful Life."

While "Shop" would sadly be the only Lubitsch movie with James Stewart playing the lead, the actor's typical affability and relaxed posture made him a natural fit for Lubitsch's sensibilities. Few of the director's other leading men, whether they were Gary Cooper or Don Ameche, could match what Stewart could suggest with a raised eyebrow.

Nikita Lavretski. Photo by Christopher Small.By his own count, Belarusian filmmaker Nikita Lavretski has released eight multimedia works this year: three mid- or feature-length films, one TikTok series, two stand-up specials, a short, and A Kid’s Flick, first screened at festivals at the end of 2021 but which he released online in 2022. It’s an astonishingly prodigious run even for a filmmaker well known—if known at all—for the speed and quantity of his output. Jokes About War and A Date in Minsk, the best of the bunch, played at Doclisboa last month, only a year after A Kid’s Flick had its world premiere at the same festival.Without a doubt, I count these films among the most significant and audacious of the year, though perhaps as much for personal as for cinematic reasons. Jokes About War was one of the first films of any kind released...

James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan’s love-hate romance, which spawned many later meet-cutes, is more eccentric than you might remember

Ernst Lubitsch’s 1940 romcom classic is re-released: it stars James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan as the two squabbling shop assistants, Alfred and Klara, who are anonymous romantic penpals falling in love without knowing who the other really is and who in real life can’t stand each other. It’s a parallel universe situation that effectively takes the dislike/love duality of the meet-cute scenario and perpetuates it through almost the entire drama.

The Shop Around the Corner is based on the Hungarian stage play Parfumerie and keeps the Mitteleuropa setting of elegant Budapest: strange to think that this film was appearing just as Hungary was joining the war, on the wrong side. It inspired many remakes, most famously the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan weepie-romance update You’ve Got Mail...

CineSavant’s hands-down favorite holiday film, this Ernst Lubitsch classic radiates human kindness in all directions. Nobody is perfect: misunderstandings benign and profound are the gentle impetus for a sweet story that will renew one’s belief that people are basically good. It’s James Stewart’s best pre-war performance, as he fits his character so perfectly; as in last month’s The Mortal Storm he and Margaret Sullavan exude decency and ‘niceness’ even when they’re being rude to each other. Frank Morgan tops his Wizard characterization, and the movie is so generous that it lets the nervy little go-getter William Tracy be the hero of the day. I’m glad this wasn’t re-invented as a sitcom, but they sure ran it through the remake hurdles.

The Shop Around the Corner

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1940 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 99 min. / Street Date December 22, 2020 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: James Stewart,...

For many of us, the 2020 version of the holidays is going to be a more homebound one than usual. What better time to build your physical-media collection with DVDs, Blu-rays, and books to help keep the season bright?

Blu-ray debuts

This year saw the first release of several Christmas favorites on Blu-ray, from Paul Feig’s 2019 sleeper hit “Last Christmas” (Universal Home Entertainment) to the first North American hi-def releases of the moving and funny anime classic “Tokyo Godfathers” (Gkids/Shout Factory), a contemporary adaptation of the Christmas-set Western tale “3 Godfathers,” and the all-star WWII drama “A Midnight Clear” (Shout Selects). The latter, a 1992 adaptation of the William Wharton novel from writer-director Keith Gordon, features a cast of up-and-coming actors who would eventually become filmmakers themselves, including Ethan Hawke, Peter Berg, Frank Whaley, and Gary Sinise.

Stone-cold classics

Bedford Falls never looked so good: Paramount Home Entertainment offers “It’s a Wonderful Life...

It’s pretty scary to think that as late as 1940 both Washington and the American public were sharply divided over Nazi Germany. Poland had been overrun and France was about to fall, but MGM waited until June of that year to release this softened adaptation of a novel written as a warning to the world in 1937. Handsomely produced with MGM’s high-gloss production values, it’s remembered as a valiant and courageous anti-Nazi film. Its all-star cast reunited the potent romantic team of James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan for sentimental fireworks.

The Mortal Storm

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1940 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 100 min. / Street Date November 3, 2020 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Robert Young, Frank Morgan, Robert Stack, Bonita Granville, Irene Rich, William T. Orr, Maria Ouspenskaya, Gene Reynolds, Russell Hicks, Esther Dale, Dan Dailey, Ward Bond, Rudolph Anders, Brad Dexter.

Cinematography: William H. Daniels

Film Editor:...

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”

That haunting line opened Daphne Du Maurier’s treasured 1938 romantic thriller “Rebecca,” which was published in 1938. Lauded by critics, it quickly became a best-seller and has been in print ever since. And for good reason.

Du Maurier wraps readers around her little finger with this addictive tale of a timid young woman-her name is never mentioned-who meets and falls in love with an enigmatic wealthy widower, Maxim de Winter, while in Monte Carlo working as a paid companion to the obnoxious American, Mrs. Van Hopper. Max and the young woman soon fall in love. They marry and he takes her home to his gothic estate Manderley run with an iron-fist by the tightly wound housekeeper Mrs. Danvers who is obsessed with the late, charismatic Rebecca, the late wife of Maxim.

Two years after its publication, “Gone with the Wind” producer David O. Selznick...

” May we not believe as we choose and allow others to do the same?”

James Stewart in The Mortal Storm will soon be available on Blu-ray from Warner Archive

Masterful director Frank Borzage’s brilliance behind the camera empowers this story of Hitler’s rise to power as seen through the microcosm of one German family. What on the surface seems small and personal, is instead a towering bold revelation of the brutality of the Nazi regime. James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan lead an impressive cast in a sweeping tale of the political and human chaos that rips a family apart, leading to savagery, sacrifice, and ultimately heroism.

The post James Stewart in The Mortal Storm Available on Blu-ray From Warner Archive appeared first on We Are Movie Geeks.

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.

Two bickering shop attendants each find solace in the romantic letters they receive from secret admirers. Of course those unknown admirers are themselves and thereby hangs the plot of Ernst Lubitsch’s gently comic masterpiece starring Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart and Frank Morgan. Movies don’t get more transparently soulful, touching or funny as this 1940 film. It’s practically perfect.

Happy September, guys! This month’s home entertainment releases are wasting no time, as Tuesday looks to be another stellar day of horror and sci-fi titles coming our way. For those of you excited for Blade Runner 2049, Warner Bros. is putting out The Final Cut version of Ridley Scott’s original masterpiece in 4K Ultra HD, and Criterion is giving Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca their trademarked HD treatment with a stunning new release.

As far as new indie horror movies go, both A Dark Song and Raw come home this Tuesday and are well worth your time, and for those of you Winchester brothers fans out there, the 12th season of Supernatural is being released this week, too.

Other notable titles for September 5th include The Spell, The Atoning, The Basement, I Saw What You Did, and a 4K Ultra HD release of The Cabin in the Woods.

Blade Runner...

While the vast majority of our favorite films of last year have been treated with Blu-ray releases, one title near the top of the list we’ve been waiting the longest for is Kelly Reichardt‘s Certain Women. It looks like it’s been worth the wait as The Criterion Collection have unveiled their September releases and it’s leading the pack (with special features also an interview with the director and Todd Haynes!).

Also getting a release in September, is Michael Haneke‘s Isabelle Huppert-led The Piano Teacher and the recent documentary David Lynch: The Art Life (arriving perfectly-timed to the end of the new Twin Peaks). There’s also Alfred Hitchcock‘s classic psychodrama Rebecca and the concert film Festival, featuring Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, and many more.

Check out the high-resolution cover art and full details on the releases below, with more on Criterion’s site.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveriesNEWSJohn Hurt and Emmanuelle RivaCurrently, due to American President Donald Trump's executive travel ban, Academy Award-winning Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi cannot travel to the United States. But in a statement made to The New York Times, the filmmaker, who is nominated again this year for The Salesman, says he wouldn't attend even if granted an exception:Instilling fear in the people is an important tool used to justify extremist and fanatic behavior by narrow-minded individuals.

However, I believe that the similarities among the human beings on this earth and its various lands, and among its cultures and its faiths, far outweigh their differences. Last week we lost two great actors, John Hurt (1940 - 2017) and Emmanuelle Riva (1927 - 2017).Francis Ford Coppola's recent forays into moving images, whether the super-local indie thriller Twixt or his "live cinema" project, have been ambitious and unusual,...

'The Grandfather': Fernando Fernán Gómez as the 'abuelo' of the title. 'The Grandfather' movie review: Gorgeous, surprisingly effective sentimental family drama with strong central performance The Grandfather / El abuelo is a film with a pedigree. It is based on a novel by Benito Pérez Galdòs, considered by many the greatest Spanish writer of the 19th century. Its director, José Luis Garci, took home the 1982 Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award for Beguin the Beguine / Volver a empezar. Its star, veteran Fernando Fernán Gómez, whose film career spanned more than six decades, was one of the most admired actors in Spain. Add to that the stunning work of cinematographer Raúl Pérez Cubero and Manuel Balboa's evocative score, and the sum total should be a cinematic masterpiece. Well, not quite. Garci had perhaps been watching too many Mexican soap operas, for that is the feel he gives to this gorgeous-looking tale...

Norma Shearer films Note: This article is being revised and expanded. Please check back later. Turner Classic Movies' Norma Shearer month comes to a close this evening, Nov. 24, '15, with the presentation of the last six films of Shearer's two-decade-plus career. Two of these are remarkably good; one is schizophrenic, a confused mix of high comedy and low drama; while the other three aren't the greatest. Yet all six are worth a look even if only because of Norma Shearer herself – though, really, they all have more to offer than just their top star. Directed by W.S. Van Dyke, the no-expense-spared Marie Antoinette (1938) – $2.9 million, making it one of the most expensive movies ever made up to that time – stars the Canadian-born Queen of MGM as the Austrian-born Queen of France. This was Shearer's first film in two years (following Romeo and Juliet) and her first release following husband Irving G.

Norma Shearer films Note: This article is being revised and expanded. Please check back later. Turner Classic Movies' Norma Shearer month comes to a close this evening, Nov. 24, '15, with the presentation of the last six films of Shearer's two-decade-plus career. Two of these are remarkably good; one is schizophrenic, a confused mix of high comedy and low drama; while the other three aren't the greatest. Yet all six are worth a look even if only because of Norma Shearer herself – though, really, they all have more to offer than just their top star. Directed by W.S. Van Dyke, the no-expense-spared Marie Antoinette (1938) – $2.9 million, making it one of the most expensive movies ever made up to that time – stars the Canadian-born Queen of MGM as the Austrian-born Queen of France. This was Shearer's first film in two years (following Romeo and Juliet) and her first release following husband Irving G.

“Well I really wouldn’t care to scratch your surface, Mr. Kralik, because I know exactly what I’d find. Instead of a heart, a hand-bag. Instead of a soul, a suitcase. And instead of an intellect, a cigarette lighter… which doesn’t work.”

The Shop Around The Corner screens this Saturday morning, November 14th at The Hi-Pointe Theater (1005 McCausland Ave., St. Louis, Mo 63117) as part of their Classic Film Series.

One of Ernst Lubitsch’s finest comedies, The Shop Around The Corner is a 1940 classic which takes places in a Budapest gift shop. The inspiration for the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan vehicle You’Ve Got Mail , the film watches as two employees, Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan) and Alfred Kralick (James Stewart), repeatedly bicker. Unbeknownst to both, they’re also madly in love with each other, having been anonymous pen-pals for several months. Things take a sad turn when Alfred...

Constance Cummings in 'Night After Night.' Constance Cummings: Working with Frank Capra and Mae West (See previous post: “Constance Cummings: Actress Went from Harold Lloyd to Eugene O'Neill.”) Back at Columbia, Harry Cohn didn't do a very good job at making Constance Cummings feel important. By the end of 1932, Columbia and its sweet ingenue found themselves in court, fighting bitterly over stipulations in her contract. According to the actress and lawyer's daughter, Columbia had failed to notify her that they were picking up her option. Therefore, she was a free agent, able to offer her services wherever she pleased. Harry Cohn felt otherwise, claiming that his contract player had waived such a notice. The battle would spill over into 1933. On the positive side, in addition to Movie Crazy 1932 provided Cummings with three other notable Hollywood movies: Washington Merry-Go-Round, American Madness, and Night After Night. 'Washington Merry-Go-Round...

Vivien Leigh ca. late 1940s. Vivien Leigh movies: now controversial 'Gone with the Wind,' little-seen '21 Days Together' on TCM Vivien Leigh is Turner Classic Movies' star today, Aug. 18, '15, as TCM's “Summer Under the Stars” series continues. Mostly a stage actress, Leigh was seen in only 19 films – in about 15 of which as a leading lady or star – in a movie career spanning three decades. Good for the relatively few who saw her on stage; bad for all those who have access to only a few performances of one of the most remarkable acting talents of the 20th century. This evening, TCM is showing three Vivien Leigh movies: Gone with the Wind (1939), 21 Days Together (1940), and A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). Leigh won Best Actress Academy Awards for the first and the third title. The little-remembered film in-between is a TCM premiere. 'Gone with the Wind' Seemingly all...

Robert Redford: 'The Great Gatsby' and 'The Way We Were' tonight on Turner Classic Movies Turner Classic Movies' Star of the Month Robert Redford returns this evening with three more films: two Sydney Pollack-directed efforts, Out of Africa and The Way We Were, and Jack Clayton's film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel The Great Gatsby. (See TCM's Robert Redford film schedule below. See also: "On TCM: Robert Redford Movies.") 'The Great Gatsby': Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby Released by Paramount Pictures, the 1974 film version of The Great Gatsby had prestige oozing from just about every cinematic pore. The film was based on what some consider the greatest American novel ever written. Francis Ford Coppola, whose directing credits included the blockbuster The Godfather, and who, that same year, was responsible for both The Godfather Part II and The Conversation, penned the adaptation. Multiple Tony winner David Merrick (Becket,...

Robert Redford: 'The Great Gatsby' and 'The Way We Were' tonight on Turner Classic Movies Turner Classic Movies' Star of the Month Robert Redford returns this evening with three more films: two Sydney Pollack-directed efforts, Out of Africa and The Way We Were, and Jack Clayton's film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel The Great Gatsby. (See TCM's Robert Redford film schedule below. See also: "On TCM: Robert Redford Movies.") 'Out of Africa' Out of Africa (1985) is an unusual Robert Redford star vehicle in that the film's actual lead isn't Redford, but Meryl Streep -- at the time seen as sort of a Bette Davis-Alec Guinness mix: like Davis, Streep received a whole bunch of Academy Award nominations within the span of a few years: from 1978-1985, she was shortlisted for no less than six movies.* Like Guinness, Streep could transform...

Kids, you may not believe this, but some of us are old enough to remember when you used to have to connect to the Internet via 56k dial-up modems. Or that AOL was once the most popular Internet service provider, so popular that everyone recognized the cheerful "You've Got Mail" alert that sounded when you signed on. Or that the "You've Got Mail" greeting was a promise that there was something exciting waiting for you in your e-mail inbox, not just spam ads for Canadian Viagra. Don't believe us? There's a historical document you should check out, aptly titled, "You've Got Mail."

It's been just 15 years since Nora Ephron's romantic comedy opened (December 18, 1998), but it seems like eons ago, not just because the Internet has evolved so much since then, but because we've all watched the unwitting romance between Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) and Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) -- business rivals by day,...

Academy Award-winning actress Joan Fontaine, the leading lady known for her string of roles as demure, well-mannered and often well-bred heroines in the 1940s, and the younger sister of actress Olivia de Havilland, died today at her home in Carmel, California; she was 96.

Known best for her back-to-back roles in two Alfred Hitchcock thrillers -- the 1940 Best Picture winner Rebecca and the 1941 film Suspicion, for which she won a Best Actress Oscar, making her the ony actor in a Hitchcock film to receive an Academy Award -- she and her sister were enshrined in Hollywood lore as intense rivals, and their rivalry reached a peak of sorts when Fontaine beat de Havilland for the 1941 Best Actress Oscar.

Born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland in 1917 in Tokyo, Japan, Fontaine suffered from recurring ailments throughout her childhood, resulting in her mother moving both her and Olivia to California. While her mother, stage actress Lillian Fontaine, desired for both her daughters to be actresses, it was only Olivia who initially pursued an acting career, as Fontaine returned to Japan for two years when she was 15 years old to live with her father, who divorced Lillian in 1919. Upon returning to the states, Fontaine found that Olivia was already becoming an established actress, and began to embark on her own career. Starting out in theater, Joan initially changed her name to Joan Burfield, then Joan Fontaine (so as to avoid confusion with her sister), and soon found herself in moderately noteworthy parts in such films as You Can't Beat Love (1937), A Damsel in Distress (1937, opposite Fred Astaire) and Gunga Din (1939, alongside Cary Grant, her future leading man in Suspicion). Though she garnered more notice in 1939 in the supporting part of naive newlywed Peggy Day in the classic comedy The Women, she was far eclipsed in fame and reputation by her sister, who had already starred along Errol Flynn in a number of romance adventures, and who received her first Oscar nomination for the blockbuster Gone With the Wind.

It was the same man who cast de Havilland in Gone With the Wind who would make Fontaine into a major star. Looking to follow up the monstrous success of Gone With the Wind with another noteworthy literary adapation, producer David O. Selnick snapped up the rights to the Daphne du Maurier bestseller Rebecca, in which an unnamed, demure heroine -- known only as "the second Mrs. de Winter" -- is taunted by the memory of her husband's first wife, the beautiful and seductive title character. Selznick brought director Alfred Hitchcock over for his first American production, cast matinee idol and rising star Laurence Olivier as moody, mysterious husband Maxim de Winter, and embarked on a Scarlett O'Hara-style talent search for his leading lady. Rejecting Loretta Young, Margaret Sullavan, Vivian Leigh (then Olivier's wife), and a then-unknown Anne Baxter along with hundreds of other actresses, Selznick decided on Fontaine, who though not an established star projected the right mix of beauty, insecurity, and tenacity needed for the part. Fontaine's insecurity, however, was heightened by Olivier's sometimes cruel treatment of her on set, as he had lobbied aggressively for Leigh to get the role, and Hitchcock capitalized on her inferiority complex to shape her performance. The resulting film, released in 1940, was an unqualified critical and financial success, catapulting Fontaine into the tier of top Hollywood leading ladies, establishing Hitchcock firmly in the United States, and nabbing the film 11 Academy Award nominations, includine ones for both Fontaine and Olivier; it would go on to win Best Picture.

Selznick, pleased with the combination of Hitchcock and Fontaine, signed the two on for a follow-up about a demure heiress who begins to suspect that her playboy husband is out to murder her for her money. Initially titled Before the Fact, it would later be retitled Suspicion, and Cary Grant was cast as the charming but caddish husband. Though the final ending of the film was tinkered with -- studio heads thought making Grant guilty would be bad for box office, and insisted on a twist to make him actually heroic -- it was another success, earning three Oscar nominations, including Fontaine's second Best Actress nod. It was at the 1941 Academy Awards that Fontaine, once considered the also-ran to her movie star sister, beat Olivia de Havilland for the Best Actress Oscar (de Havilland had been nominated for Hold Back the Dawn). In what became part of Hollywood and Academy Award legend, Fontaine coolly rejected her sister's efforts at congratulations, and What had always been a fractious relationship since childhood became officially estranged. Hollywood wags often reported that because de Havilland lost to her sister, she would retaliate by winning two Oscars -- in 1946 for To Each His Own and 1949 for The Heiress -- in order to top Fontaine. The two would officially stop speaking to one another in 1975.

Fontaine received a third Oscar nomination in 1943, for the music melodrama The Constant Nymph, and that same year essayed the title role in the commercially successful if moderately well-regarded version of Jane Eyre opposite Orson Welles. She remained a star throughout the 1940s, appearing in the comedy The Affairs of Susan (1945), the thriller Ivy (1947), and opposite Bing Crosby in The Emperor Waltz (1948). Fontaine also gave what many consider to be her best performance in 1948's Letters from an Unknown Woman, Max Ophuls' romantic drama opposite Louis Jourdan. In 1945 she divorced her first husband, actor Brian Aherne, and in 1946 married producer William Dozier, whom she would divorce in 1951. Two years later, she was embroiled in a bitter custody battle with him over their daughter, Debbie, and the ongoing lawsuit would prevent Fontaine from accepting the role of frustrated military wife Karen Holmes in the Oscar-winning drama From Here to Eternity -- Deborah Kerr was instead cast, and received an Oscar nomination for the part.

Though she continued to work throughout the 1950s, most notably in the lavish Technicolor adaptation of Ivanhoe (1952), Ida Lupino's film noir The Bigamist (1953), and in the pioneering if often campy racial drama Island in the Sun (1957), her work in both film and television lessened, and her last film appearance was in Hammer Films horror movie The Devil's Own (1966). Television work followed in the 1970s and 1980s, and Fontaine received a Daytime Emmy nomination for the soap opera Ryan's Hope. She published an autobiography, No Bed of Roses, in 1978, and after the television film Good King Wenceslas (1994), retired officially to her home in Carmel, California.

Fontaine is survived by her daughter, Debbie Dozier.

Eleanor Parker dead at 91: ‘The Sound of Music’ actress, three-time Best Actress Oscar nominee (photo: Eleanor Parker ca. 1945) Eleanor Parker, one of the best and most beautiful actresses of the studio era, a three-time Best Actress Academy Award nominee, and one of the stars of the 1965 blockbuster and Best Picture Oscar winner The Sound of Music, died today, December 9, 2013, of complications from pneumonia at a medical facility near her home in the Southern Californian desert town of Palm Springs. Eleanor Parker was 91. “I’m primarily a character actress,” Parker told the Toronto Star in 1988. “I’ve portrayed so many diverse individuals on the screen that my own personality never emerged.” At one point, wildly imaginative publicists called her The Woman of a Thousand Faces — an absurd label, when you think of Man of a Thousand Faces Lon Chaney. Eleanor Parker never altered her appearance the way Chaney did — her...

Miklos Laszlo, a Jewish émigré from Hungary, penned his play Illatszertar in 1936 before he fled Europe in 1938 for New York City. Acquired by producer-director Ernst Lubitsch and brilliantly adapted for the screen as The Shop Around the Corner (1940) by the immortal Samson Raphaelson (who wrote nine screenplays for Lubitsch including Trouble in Paradise, The Merry Widow and Heaven Can Wait), the sublime cast included James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, Frank Morgan, Joseph Schildkraut and Felix Bressart. It represents perhaps the very pinnacle of transcendent romantic comedy in cinema: precise, subtle, intricately intimate. The material was remade as a

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Irene Dunne movies: Five-time Best Actress Academy Award nominee starred in now-forgotten originals of well-remembered remakes In his August 2007 Bright Lights article "The Elusive Pleasures of Irene Dunne," Dan Callahan explained that "the reasons for Irene Dunne’s continuing, undeserved obscurity are fairly well known. Nearly all of her best films from the thirties and forties were remade and the originals were suppressed and didn’t play on television. She did some of her most distinctive work for John Stahl at Universal, and non-horror Universal films are rarely shown now. Practically all of her movies need to be restored; even her most popular effort, The Awful Truth (1937), looks grainy and blotchy on its DVD transfer, to say nothing of things like Stahl’s When Tomorrow Comes (1939), or Rouben Mamoulian’s High, Wide, and Handsome (1937), two key Dunne films that have languished and deteriorated in a sort of television/video purgatory.

Hattie McDaniel as Mammy in ‘Gone with the Wind’: TCM schedule on August 20, 2013 (photo: Vivien Leigh and Hattie McDaniel in ‘Gone with the Wind’) See previous post: “Hattie McDaniel: Oscar Winner Makes History.” 3:00 Am Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943). Director: David Butler. Cast: Joan Leslie, Dennis Morgan, Eddie Cantor, Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Errol Flynn, John Garfield, Ida Lupino, Ann Sheridan, Dinah Shore, Alexis Smith, Jack Carson, Alan Hale, George Tobias, Edward Everett Horton, S.Z. Sakall, Hattie McDaniel, Ruth Donnelly, Don Wilson, Spike Jones, Henry Armetta, Leah Baird, Willie Best, Monte Blue, James Burke, David Butler, Stanley Clements, William Desmond, Ralph Dunn, Frank Faylen, James Flavin, Creighton Hale, Sam Harris, Paul Harvey, Mark Hellinger, Brandon Hurst, Charles Irwin, Noble Johnson, Mike Mazurki, Fred Kelsey, Frank Mayo, Joyce Reynolds, Mary Treen, Doodles Weaver. Bw-127 mins. 5:15 Am Janie (1944). Director: Michael Curtiz. Cast: Joyce Reynolds, Robert Hutton,...

Joan Fontaine today: One of the best actresses of the studio era has her ‘Summer Under the Stars’ day Joan Fontaine, one of the few surviving stars of the 1930s, is Turner Classic Movies’ "Summer Under the Stars" star today, Tuesday, August 6, 2013. I’m posting this a little late in the game: TCM has already shown six Joan Fontaine movies, including the first-rate medieval adventure Ivanhoe and the curious marital drama The Bigamist, directed by and co-starring Ida Lupino, and written by Collier Young — husband of both Fontaine and Lupino (at different times). Anyhow, TCM has quite a few more Joan Fontaine movies in store. (Photo: Joan Fontaine publicity shot ca. 1950.) (TCM schedule: Joan Fontaine movies.) As far as I’m concerned, Joan Fontaine was one of the best actresses of the studio era. She didn’t star in nearly as many movies as sister Olivia de Havilland, perhaps because...

Eleanor Parker: Palm Springs resident turns 91 today Eleanor Parker turns 91 today. The three-time Oscar nominee (Caged, 1950; Detective Story, 1951; Interrupted Melody, 1955) and Palm Springs resident is Turner Classic Movies’ Star of the Month of June 2013. Earlier this month, TCM showed a few dozen Eleanor Parker movies, from her days at Warner Bros. in the ’40s to her later career as a top Hollywood supporting player. (Photo: Publicity shot of Eleanor Parker in An American Dream.) Missing from TCM’s movie series, however, was not only Eleanor Parker’s biggest box-office it — The Sound of Music, in which she steals the show from both Julie Andrews and the Alps — but also what according to several sources is her very first movie role: a bit part in Raoul Walsh’s They Died with Their Boots On, a 1941 Western starring Errol Flynn as a dashingly handsome and all-around-good-guy-ish General George Armstrong Custer. Olivia de Havilland...

We all know that the issue of marriage equality is quite divisive, generating various sorts of responses and stances. Gay marriage is now official in places as diverse as Canada, Argentina, Australia, Mexico City, and Washington State, but it's all but unthinkable (at least for the time being) in places such as China, Nigeria, Iran, Texas, and Arkansas. Brad Pitt's mother and Angelina Jolie's father (that's Oscar-winning actor and Midnight Cowboy star Jon Voight) are totally against it, while Clint Eastwood doesn't give a damn about who gets hitched to whom. Unlike the Dirty Harry star, a former MGM contract player in the '40s -- that's Marsha Hunt (please see more info about her dozens of films further down) and a political activist in the last several decades, does very much care. (Pictured above: Hunt and documentarian Roger C. Memos, currently working on a project about the blacklisted actress.

Deborah Raffin, who had brief but successful careers both as an actress - 7th Heaven, among other shows - and a book publisher, died of leukemia last Wednesday, a family member told the Los Angeles Times. Raffin was 59 and reportedly had battled the disease for about a year. Starting out, the blonde Californian was often compared to the young Grace Kelly, People noted in a 1979 profile. Her mother, Trudy Marshall, had been a bit player for 20th Century Fox in the '40s, and her father was a wealthy meat broker. When Raffin was a sophomore at Valley College in Van Nuys,...

Hollywood actor known for playing wholesome wives and Ma Kent in Superman

Although Phyllis Thaxter, who has died aged 92, had a successful career in films throughout the 1940s and 50s, many will remember her for her last movie role, in Superman (1978). It was the small but key part of Ma Kent, the childless farmer's wife who adopts a foundling baby and names him Clark. Together with her husband (Glenn Ford) – both made intentionally to resemble the couple in Grant Wood's American Gothic painting – they bring up the abnormally physically gifted boy until he's ready to fly off "to fight for truth, justice and the American way".

At one stage, she tells him: "We Kents don't like show-offs, ain't that so? A body's got to be humble even if he knows that he's better'n his neighbours." A fragile beauty, Thaxter was never a show-off, but made an impact in a gentle way,...

Last weekend I decided it was time to burn through the DVD queue instead of sitting wordless at my computer. But when I opened the latest rental, The Good Fairy (1935) -- no, I can't remember why I rented it -- the disc was broken. We ended up watching The Matrix (1999) instead because when a black and white Willam Wyler / Preston Sturges comedy starring Margaret Sullavan is denied you, what other movie will do? Lol. 

Warner Bros had sent the BluRay and The Boyfriend remarked that we hadn't seen it since opening night in 1999. It seems like one of those movies we've all seen a million times but in my case that's only because it became such a pop culture staple. Not even its gobsmackingly terrible sequels could shake its grip on the zeitgeist.

The Matrix's modern blend of Alice in Wonderland, gun fetish porn, visual effects bravado, and technophobic dystopia...

"With The Deep Blue Sea," writes Nick Pinkerton in the Voice, "the great British director Terence Davies returns to the postwar period — though in a sense, he has never left. Born in 1945, Davies's cinema is defined by a mixed pity and fondness for the world of yesterday, a past he seemingly finds impossible to put behind him or to do without. The era's hypocritical propriety and quivering repression has most frequently been held up for 'enlightened,' Pleasantville-style condescension, but Davies is a great historical filmmaker because he feels the period too intimately to mock its rituals and mores, knows that no progress occurs without loss."

A retrospective of Davies's work is running at New York's BAMcinématek through March 27, while Sing, Memory: The Postwar England of Terence Davies opens today at the Harvard Film Archive and runs through March 26. On March 28, The Long Day Closes (1992) opens for a week-long run at New York's Film Forum.

Originally published in the Observer on 18 December 1938

I am writing this letter now, so that the readers of the Observer can light their fires with it on Monday morning, and you will have six days after it has gone up the chimney to study my wants and decide what you are going to do about them. I know you will be very busy this Christmas, but in case you have time to think about the cinema, here are one or two suggestions for useful gifts.

Give back a film industry to England, just a little one. We have been very stupid, shortsighted and wasteful here, but most of us are sorry now. There are thousands of people out of work in the studios this Christmas, many of them with little prospect of getting back again. Be kind to them, please.

Whisper in the ear of politicians and City men, and...

Joan Blondell on TCM: Dames, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am The Reckless Hour (1931) A young innocent almost ruins her life for the love of an unfeeling cad. Dir: John Francis Dillon. Cast: Dorothy Mackaill, Conrad Nagel, H. B. Warner. Bw-71 mins. 7:15 Am Big City Blues (1932) A country boy finds love and heartache in New York City. Dir: Mervyn LeRoy. Cast: Joan Blondell, Eric Linden, Jobyna Howland. Bw-63 mins. 8:30 Am Central Park (1932) Small-town kids out to make it in the big city inadvertently get mixed up with gangsters. Dir: John G. Adolfi. Cast: Joan Blondell, Wallace Ford, Guy Kibbee. Bw-58 mins. 9:30 Am Lawyer Man (1933) Success corrupts a smooth-talking lawyer. Dir: William Dieterle. Cast: William Powell, Joan Blondell, David Landau. Bw-68 mins. 10:45 Am Traveling Saleslady (1935) A toothpaste tycoon's daughter joins his rival to teach him a lesson. Dir: Ray Enright.

Joan Blondell, Dick Powell, Dames Joan Blondell has always been a favorite of mine, much like fellow wisecracking 1930s Warner Bros. players Aline MacMahon and Glenda Farrell. The fact that Blondell never became a top star says more about audiences — who preferred, say, Shirley Temple and Mickey Rooney — than about Blondell's screen presence and acting abilities. As part of its "Summer Under the Stars" film series, Turner Classic Movies is currently showing no less than 16 Joan Blondell movies today, including the TCM premiere of the 1968 crime drama Kona Coast. Directed by Lamont Johnson, Kona Coast stars Richard Boone and the capable Vera Miles. Blondell has a supporting role — one of two dozen from 1950 (For Heaven's Sake) to 1981 (The Woman Inside, released two years after Blondell's death from leukemia). [Joan Blondell Movie Schedule.] Unfortunately, TCM isn't showing the super-rare (apparently due to rights issues) The Blue Veil, Curtis Bernhardt's 1951 melodrama that earned Blondell her...

Robert Montgomery, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Forsaking All Others Joan Crawford on TCM: Mildred Pierce, Flamingo Road, When Ladies Meet Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am Forsaking All Others (1934) A woman pursues the wrong man for almost twenty years. Dir: W. S. Van Dyke. Cast: Robert Montgomery, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable. Bw-83 mins. 7:30 Am I Live My Life (1935) A flighty society girl tries to make a go of her marriage to an archaeologist. Dir: W. S. Van Dyke. Cast: Joan Crawford, Brian Aherne, Frank Morgan. Bw-97 mins. 9:15 Am Love On The Run (1936) Rival newsmen get mixed up with a runaway heiress and a ring of spies. Dir: W. S. Van Dyke. Cast: Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone. Bw-80 mins. 10:45 Am When Ladies Meet (1941) A female novelist doesn't realize her new friend is the wife whose husband she's trying to steal. Dir: Robert Z. Leonard.

Joan Crawford (right, in Daisy Kenyon) is Turner Classic Movies' next "Summer Under the Stars" star. On Monday, August 22, TCM will be showing 13 Joan Crawford movies, in addition to Peter Fitzgerald's documentary Joan Crawford: The Ultimate Movie Star, narrated by Anjelica Huston. (Curiously, Crawford is nowhere to be found in any of the 40+ films directed by Anjelica Huston's father, John Huston.) [Joan Crawford Movie Schedule.] As an MGM and WB star, Crawford is one of TCM's most visible stars. Every week, there's some Joan Crawford movie or other on TCM — at times, a number of them. Even so, there's plenty of room for variety, as Crawford made about 60 films between 1930 and 1950, roughly her (talkie) time at MGM (1930s and early '40s) and WB (late '40s). There would be even more room for variety if TCM bothered showing more of Crawford's silents. She appeared in about 25 of those, precious few of which have surfaced so far.

Lee Remick, Eve Arden, James Stewart in Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder James Stewart on TCM: The Stratton Story, No Highway In The Sky Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am The Last Gangster (1937) When a notorious gangster gets out of prison, he vows revenge on the wife who left him. Dir: Edward Ludwig. Cast: Edward G. Robinson, James Stewart, Rose Stradner. Bw-81 mins. 7:30 Am The Shopworn Angel (1938) A showgirl gives up life in the fast lane for a young soldier on his way to fight World War I. Dir: H. C. Potter. Cast: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Walter Pidgeon. Bw-85 mins. 9:00 Am Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939) An idealistic Senate replacement takes on political corruption. Dir: Frank Capra. Cast: Jean Arthur, James Stewart, Claude Rains. Bw-130 mins. 11:15 Am Wife Vs. Secretary (1936) A secretary becomes so valuable to her boss that it jeopardizes his marriage.

Claudette Colbert/James Robert Parish Q&A Pt.1: 'The Claudette Colbert Business' A follow-up to the previous question: Which roles did Claudette Colbert want — whether at Paramount or elsewhere — that she didn't get? Colbert knew her limitations (because of her sophisticated look and being French-born), so, once a star, she stayed away from seeking parts that would be too far afield from her screen type. Noticeably, she was one of the few actresses in late-1930s Hollywood who did not seek the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind despite the fact that she was a great favorite and personal friend of Gwtw producer David O. Selznick. A few years later, Selznick offered Colbert a huge salary to star in his life-on-the-homefront World War II saga, Since You Went Away. She couldn't resist the hefty fee, but lived to regret the decision, because the set of that...

Mostly a Paramount star, Claudette Colbert hasn't been a frequent presence on Turner Classic Movies — that is, apart from reruns of her relatively few movies at MGM, Warner Bros., and Rko. Unfortunately, TCM's "Summer Under the Stars" day dedicated to Colbert — Friday, August 12 — won't rectify that glaring cinematic omission. [Claudette Colbert Movie Schedule.] Despite the fact that dozens of Claudette Colbert movies remain unavailable — thanks to Universal, owner of the old Paramount movie library — TCM is only presenting one Colbert premiere, Ken Annakin's British-made 1952 drama The Planter's Wife / Outpost in Malaya, co-starring Jack Hawkins. Of course, one rarely seen movie is better than none, but still… Think The Wiser Sex, The Lady Lies, Manslaughter, Young Man of Manhattan, The Phantom President (in case it's lying in some vault somewhere), The Man from Yesterday, Misleading Lady, His Woman, Zaza, Secrets of a Secretary, I Met Him in Paris, Texas Lady, Practically Yours, Skylark, Private Worlds,...

A striking stage presence for more than 60 years and a familiar face on TV

Sheila Burrell, who has died aged 89 after a long illness, was a cousin of Laurence Olivier, and a similarly distinctive and fiery actor with a broad, open face, high cheekbones and expressive eyes. She stood at only 5ft 5ins but could fill the widest stage and hold the largest audience. Her voice was a mezzo marvel, kittenish or growling and, in later life, acquired the viscosity and vintage of an old ruby port, matured after years of experience.

In a career spanning more than 60 years, she made her name as a wild, red-headed Barbara Allen (subject of the famous ballad) in Peter Brook's 1949 production of Dark of the Moon (Ambassadors theatre), an American pot-boiler about the seduction of a lusty girl by a witch boy and the hysterical reaction of her local community.

The role remained one of her favourites,...