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Sight & Sound...Classic Cinema with Live Music

November 23, 2013, 6:06 pm
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Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo at Davies Hall, San Francisco, November 1, 2013

A few months ago the San Francisco Symphony announced that it would kick off a season-long classic film series with Hitchcock Week, October 30 - November 2. Each night a different Hitchcock movie was to be presented with its music track scrubbed and the score performed live by the symphony orchestra. Psycho launched the series on the 30th, followed by The Lodger on Halloween, Vertigo on November 1st and, on the 2nd, a night of 'greatest hits' excerpts (To Catch a Thief, Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder, North by Northwest) hosted by Eva Marie Saint. Most appealing to me among these events was the Vertigo program, not only because Vertigo is one of my favorite films of all time, but also because the symphony's musical accompaniment would be the world premiere live performance of Bernard Herrmann's full score. But the event was sold out by the time I found out about it. Only due to my good fortune in making a connection with a very considerate symphony representative did a pair of orchestra section seats come my way. And so it was that on the first Friday night in November my dear friend, Mike, and I, filled with anticipation and excitement, set off for Davies Symphony Hall to see Vertigo and hear its luscious score live. Once there, we sampled the special cocktail concocted for the evening, "The Voyeur" (sparkling wine, Grand Marnier, cognac), had a quick bite to eat, took our seats and waited for the lights to dim.

"Voyeur"
The presentation started with an informal talk by Bernard Herrmann biographer Steven Smith, an expert on the composer's music, who contends that "the pairing of a master visualist like Alfred Hitchcock and a composer like Bernard Herrmann, who set out to pull viewers 'into the drama,' remains the greatest director-composer partnership in cinema." Many consider Vertigo'sscore the ultimate of the composer's seven scores for the director (The Trouble with Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Wrong Man, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, Marnie), and Bernard Herrmann himself acknowledged that the music he composed for Vertigo was his favorite of his Hitchcock works.

James Stewart and Kim Novak, Vertigo
Within Herrmann's heady score is a deliberate nod to composer Richard Wagner, particularly the "Liebestod" from Tristan und Isolde - what biographer Smith refers to as Vertigo's "Wagner-tinged love theme." Wagner described Tristan und Isolde as "a tale of endless yearning, longing, the bliss and wretchedness of love...a yearning, a hunger and anguishing forever renewing itself." I can't think of a better description of Scottie Ferguson's never-ending, obsessive love for Madeleine Elster, so flawlessly accentuated by Bernard Herrmann's heart-piercing theme.

I have seen Vertigo on many screens large and small over the years, from its re-release into theaters in 1983, to countless in-home viewings, to a screening last year at Oakland's movie palace, the Paramount Theatre. As I watched Hitchcock's dreamscape unfold onscreen at Davies Hall and listened to the live performance of Herrmann's score, I thought of Diane Ackerman's poetic Natural History of the Senses and her descriptions of the visual image as a "tripwire for the emotions" and of music that "like pure emotions...frees us from the elaborate nuisance and inaccuracy of words." My experience of Vertigo with orchestra was as profoundly moving as it was unique.

My friend Mike, who was once a sound engineer for CBS Records, remarked that the symphony was so perfectly in synch with the film that he found himself forgetting that an orchestra was onstage performing the score. When he did take a moment to watch the orchestra, he said he noticed that conductor Joshua Gersen was "playing to time," keeping a close eye on a clock as well as the music and musicians.

In 2011 I attended my first film with live accompaniment at the San Francisco Symphony when Casablanca was screened and the orchestra performed Max Steiner's memorable score. It was exhilarating and I hoped there would be more such events to come. When I learned the Symphony had scheduled a film series to run through its entire 2013/2014 concert season I was thrilled. The Hitchcock Week launch was a great success and four more classic-film-with-orchestra events are still ahead. Classic film buffs in or near the San Francisco Bay Area (or who may be headed this way for business or holiday) shouldn't miss the chance to experience an evening of great cinema backed with live orchestral accompaniment  - a pleasure that nearly defies description.

Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart, Casablanca
Coming to the symphony on Saturday and Sunday, December 6 and 7, is the film classic voted the greatest musical of all time by the American Film Institute. Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly's Singin' in the Rain (1952), featuring Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed's music, will be presented at 7:30 pm both nights. Conductor Sarah Hicks will lead the orchestra.

Gene Kelly, Singin' in the Rain

On Saturday, February 15, Valentine's Day weekend, the symphony will present A Night at the Oscars. The program will begin at 8:00 pm, and conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos and the symphony will accompany excerpts from The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Gone with the Wind (1939), The Wizard of Oz (1939), Citizen Kane (1941) and Ben-Hur (1959) with the music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Max Steiner, Herbert Stothart, Bernard Herrmann and Miklós Rózsa.


Basil Rathbone and Errol Flynn, The Adventures of Robin Hood

Saturday April 12, brings Charlie Chaplin's silent masterpiece, City Lights (1931), to Davies Hall. Conductor Richard Kaufman and the symphony orchestra will perform Chaplin's score, its main theme based on José Padilla's song, "La Violetera."

Charlie Chaplin, City Lights
The season's classic film series will end with Fantasia on Saturday, May 31, at 8:00 pm, and Sunday, June 1, at 4:00 pm. The event will feature a mix of elements from Disney's original Fantasia (1940) and Fantasia 2000. Sarah Hicks will conduct the symphony in selections including Stravinsky's Firebird Suite, Debussy's Claire de lune, Beethoven's Pastorale, Dukas'The Sorcerer's Apprentice and more.

Fantasia

For detailed information on the San Francisco Symphony's classic film series and its "Compose Your Own" special pricing package, click here or call (415) 864-6000.
 
Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco
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History Lessons: Fashion in Film and the Hollywood Costume

November 27, 2013, 12:00 am
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Clockwise from top left: Clara Bow, Joan Crawford, Gloria Swanson and Louise Brooks

Fashion in Film

Film and costume design history expert Kimberly Truhler, one of the presenting hosts at TCM’s 2013 Classic Film Festival, launched her new webinar series The History of Fashion in Filmwith The 1920s - The Jazz Age on November 17 - and I was there!
                                                                                                                              
Kimberly certainly knows her stuff - she’s an adjunct professor at L.A.’s Woodbury University where she teaches a course on the history of fashion in film, she serves as a film and costume design historian for Christies of London, curates a private vintage fashion collection, manages her own website, GlamAmor(dedicated to preserving and sharing the history and legacy of fashion in film), and much more. Her impressive experience and knowledge were clearly evident throughout the nearly two-hour inaugural webinar session. And what an education I got…

Kimberly’s discourse touched on the history of American film itself, from its invention to the advent of the studio system, from its beginnings on the East Coast to its move to the West Coast, from the age of the nickelodeon to the production of full-length feature films, from the silent era to the dawn of sound and from a time when costumes were often homemade to the use of European couture to the emergence of American couture.

Kimberly narrowed her focus to four films of the ‘20s that she considers essential to film fashion history because of their immediate as well as long-lasting impact on style on and offscreen. Here is a snapshot of just some of what we learned:

Cecil B. DeMille’s Why Change Your Wife? (1920), starring Gloria Swanson with costumes by Clare West
Clare West, as was the practice of the time, did not actually design costumes but traveled to Europe where she spent lavishly on clothing from couture houses. Swanson’s opulent wardrobe and signature style was created out of West’s selections – and DeMille spared no expense to dress his great star.

It (1927), from Paramount, starring Clara Bow with costumes by Travis Banton
Banton made a daring decision when he chose to showcase the “little black dress” look on Clara Bow in It only a few months after Coco Chanel unveiled her “Ford dress,” the first lbddesigned for conventional wear. Until then, women wore black only at funerals - but the look was popularized with It.

MGM’s Our Dancing Daughters (1928), starring Joan Crawford with costumes credited to David Cox (though Kimberly suggests that Adrian may well have been involved)
This film made a star of Joan Crawford and popularized the Art Deco look. The movie also promoted “women wearing pants” (a huge taboo at the time) with an equestrian look that was famously mirrored decades later in Diane Keaton’s legendary Annie Hall style.

G.W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box (1929), a German silent film starring American actress Louise Brooks with costumes by French designer Jean Patou
Would anyone remember Louise Brooks if not for this film? Her pared-down, low-cut, back-revealing wardrobe by French fashion icon Jean Patou signaled the direction style would take in the 1930s. And Brooks’ iconic “bob” became a haircut du jour that never went out of style.

Clockwise from top left: Clare West, Jean Patou, Adrian and Travis Banton
I have barely scratched the surface of Kimberly‘s fascinating webinar but a recording of the session is now available online. Click herefor information on access to the recording and for more on the remaining History of Fashion in Film webinars:

Sun., December 15: The 1930s – Art Deco Elegance
Sun., Janaury 19: The 1940s – Film Noir Style
Sun., February 16: The 1950s – Opposites Attract
Sun., March 16: The 1960s – Revolution
Sun., April 20: The 1970s – Everybody’s All American
 
Cary Grant and Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus (1932), costume design by Travis Banton

The Hollywood Costume

Deborah Nadoolman-Landis
Meanwhile, beginning on the 6th of next month, Turner Classic Movies will shine its Friday Night Spotlight on The Hollywood Costume all through December. Costume designer (Animal House, The Blues Brothers, Raiders of the Lost Ark) and author Deborah Nadoolman Landis will host, and every Friday evening viewers will be treated to three double features, each showcasing the work of a different top Hollywood costume designer. Here’s what we can look forward to:

December 6
Designer: Travis Banton
Films: Blonde Venus (1932), starring Marlene Dietrich and Cary Grant, and Cleopatra (1934), starring Claudette Colbert
Designer: Orry-Kelly
Films: Casablanca(1942), starring Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart, and Auntie Mame (1958), starring Rosalind Russell
Designer: Adrian
Films: The Women (1939), starring Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford, and Anna Karenina (1935), starring Greta Garbo

December 13
Designer: Irene Sharaff
Films: Funny Girl (1968), starring Barbra Streisand, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton
Designer: Anthea Sylbert
Films: Chinatown (1974), starring Faye Dunaway and Jack Nicholson, and Carnal Knowledge (1971), starring Jack Nicholson and Ann-Margret
Designer: Walter Plunkett
Films: Adam’s Rib (1949), starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, and Forbidden Planet (1956), starring Walter Pidgeon and Anne Francis

December 20
Designer: Jean Louis
Films: Send Me No Flowers (1964), starring Doris Day and Rock Hudson, and The Big Heat (1953), starring Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame
Designer: Anna Hill Johnstone
Films: Dog Day Afternoon (1975), starring Al Pacino, and The Stepford Wives (1975), starring Katharine Ross, Paula Prentiss and Tina Louise
Designer: Edith Head
Films: Sullivan’s Travels (1941), starring Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake, and The Seven Little Foys (1955), starring Bob Hope

December 27
Designer: Edward Stevenson
Films: The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), starring Joseph Cotten and Tim Holt, and Out of the Past (1947), starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer
Designer: Ann Roth
Films: Silkwood (1983), starring Meryl Streep, and Klute (1971), starring Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland
Designer: Helen Rose
Films: The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), starring Lana Turner and Kirk Douglas, and Annie Get Your Gun (1950), starring Betty Hutton.

(check your local TV listings for times)

Faye Dunaway in Chinatown (1974), costume design by Anthea Sylbert


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Film Passion 101: Falling in Love Again

December 3, 2013, 10:34 pm
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Watching a console TV for long stretches from the living room floor and a distance of not more than a few feet was a good part of a typical day for most tots of my era. Much of what we watched was “old movies,” because, for many years, the films of what we now call "The Golden Age" aired morning, noon and night on local stations in need of hours of not-too-expensive programming. On top of this, I grew up in a movie-loving home. Mother, a child of the ‘30s and young woman of the ‘40s, had been one of the countless kids who was terrorized by King Kongwhen it was a first-run release and she was among the many teenagers who lined up to see Gone with the Wind when it was breaking box office records. Later, after she came to live in Southern California during World War II, she had chance encounters with one or two movie stars that she never forgot. Dad wasn't a movie fan in the same way, but he did love Cagney. And he favored Westerns. One night, when my brother and I were in his charge, he took us to see Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. It was the only night out at the movies we ever had with just dad.

Since movies were a part of my life from the beginning, is it any mystery that I knew who Bette Davis, Clark Gable, Greta Garbo and Tyrone Power were before I knew the names of some of my relatives? I recall noting in my diary when I was about nine that I had watched The Great Lie, “starring Bette Davis.” I remember first being enchanted by Tyrone Power when he smiled at Dorothy Lamour just after they met on a staircase in Johnny Apollo. And there was the time I watched Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder every night, five nights in a row, on a channel that ran the same feature film every week, all through the week.

But as I got older my interests multipied to include music and boys and so many other things. And time continued to pass...


It was summertime and I was living in a beach town where I’d taken a part-time job at a veterinary clinic until the fall term began. I usually listened to records or sometimes watched TV when I got home from work an hour two before dinner. Channel surfing one day, I tuned in to an L.A. TV station that aired "old movies" in the afternoon. I hadn’t seen any of the musicals of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers at that point and was curious, so I sat down to watch when it turned out the movie of the day would be The Gay Divorcee(1934).

Without complaint I slipped away from the casual, au naturel 1970s and tumbled, headlong, into a fantasy realm of early 1930s glamour, style and romance. There, for the next 107 minutes, I was in a world that was all music, music, music and dancing, dancing, dancing offered up on stylized sets of enormous white Art Deco buildings and rooms glossy and plush. The intense contrast of dark and light, with accents of chrome and gleam, was everywhere - and eye-popping. This was a universe of pure elegance where even the conversation sparkled.

Resort set
The Gay Divorcee was the first in a string of musicals Astaire and Rogers headlined together and it set a pattern for the classics that would follow. In this one, he's Guy Holden, a cocky Broadway hoofer on holiday in Europe, traveling with his dim and dizzy sidekick, Egbert (Edward Everett Horton), a British attorney of sorts. Astaire is up and dancing within the film's first minutes: pressed into service to pay for dinner at a Paris nightclub, Guy puts on a floor show of his own, improvising a slapdash dance routine on the spot.
 
The prototypical Astaire/Rogers meet-cute takes place dockside in London. He is instantly smitten, she is promptly put off. When he later begins to pine for her (though he protests, "girls pine...men just suffer"), he warbles a lovesick tune, "Needle in a Haystack," and breaks into a nifty dance around his hotel room as he gets dressed. Irving Berlin was on the money when he said, "As a dancer he stands alone, and no singer knows his way around a song like Fred Astaire."

"It's just like looking for a needle in a haystack...still I've got to find you..."
A collection of eccentric screwball types surrounds the pair. Alice Brady prattles madly as Mimi's (Ginger Rogers) Aunt Hortense, a many times married and divorced scatterbrain who was once engaged to Egbert. Married Mimi is desperate to divorce her absentee husband and Hortense enlists inept Egbert to serve as her attorney; this, of course, has mixed results.

Also on hand lending comic support are Eric Blore as an unctuous waiter with an eye for detail and Erik Rhodes as an enthusiastic, if hare-brained, professional "co-respondent" ("Your wife is safe with Tonetti, he prefers spaghetti"). Briefly featured is 18-year-old Betty Grable as a bit of platinum strudel intent on k-knocking k-knees with Egbert.

Betty Grable to Edward Everett Horton:  "Let's K-knock K-knees"
Most of The Gay Divorcee is set at a lavish resort on the faux English seaside - the Bella Vista, a glittering monument to Art Deco. When Guy spies Mimi at the hotel, he pursues and coaxes her into dancing with him in an empty ballroom overlooking a moonlit sea. He sings Cole Porter's glorious "Night and Day," they dance, and as the heat between them builds, her resistance begins to melt. It's a palpably seductive moment and he literally dances his way into her heart. The expression on Mimi's face when the music ends says it all...


Naturally, there's a cleverly contrived identity mix-up that derails the romance for a while. It centers on time and place and the phrase, "chance is the fool's name for fate" (repeated variously as "chance is the foolish name for fate,""fate is a foolish thing to take chances with,""chances are that fate is foolish," etc.).  But Guy and Mimi unravel the misunderstanding and it isn't long before they're dancing again, this time in the musical centerpiece of The Gay Divorcee,"The Continental." Here are excerpts from the finale of that many-phased, grand-scale 22-minute production number:


Headed for matrimony in the end, Guy and Mimi prepare to leave the resort together by taking one last turn in her hotel room to strains of "The Continental." And when Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers danced up and over the dining table and chairs and out the door, my heart went with them.

And that was when my dormant affection for "old movies" reawakened and became a full-blown passion. Soon it was more than classics on TV and keeping up with the latest new movies (many of them now legends of the New Hollywood) for me. I began to haunt "revival houses," where retrospectives of Hollywood classics were shown, and "art houses" that screened foreign films old and new. And that was just the beginning.
 
Thinking back on it, the experience of reconnecting with classic movies and recognizing, consciously, what they meant to me wasn't too unlike what had happened when I returned to my hometown for the first time after many months away. It was springtime and as the car descended into the valley where I'd grown up, the scent of orange blossoms drifted up, growing stronger and stronger. Tears suddenly sprang into my eyes. The smell was so powerful and exotic...and yet so intimately familiar. That beautiful scent had been a part of my life for as long as I could remember and I'm not sure I fully appreciated it until that instant.

~

The Gay Divorcee was a box office smash and established the Astaire/Rogers formula for the best of their films for RKO. The picture was nominated for five Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Art Direction (Van Nest Polglase and Carroll Clark) Best Music/Score (Max Steiner), Best Sound Recording (Carl Dreher) and the first Best Music/Original Song award, which it won, for "The Continental" by Con Conrad and Herb Magidson.

The film was based on a 1932 Broadway hit, Gay Divorce, in which Astaire had starred with Claire Luce (not Clare Boothe Luce). Only "Night and Day," of the thirteen songs Cole Porter had written for the original stage production, was kept in the film version, but the plot remained intact and both Eric Blore and Erik Rhodes reprieved their Broadway roles onscreen. The original title of the musical was changed at the insistence of the Hays Office in the belief that suggesting a divorcee could be happy was safer than implying divorce might be a cause for frivolity.


Erik Rhodes and Fred Astaire, "Chance is the fool's name for fate..."

Turner Classic Movies is honoring Fred Astaire as Star of the Month in December. For more about him and the line-up of his films this month, Click here. And check the TCM Shop for Turner Classic Movies' Greatest Classics Collection: Astaire and Rogers. It features their best - The Gay Divorcee, Swing Time, Top Hat and Shall We Dance. 
~

This is my contribution to the Classic Movie Blog Association'sFilm Passion 101 Blogathon. Click here for links to participating blogs!


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Noir City News

December 10, 2013, 5:54 pm
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The latest edition of the Film Noir Foundation's Noir City e-magazine is out and, along with major features on Dan Duryea and Peter Lorre, it brings news of Noir City XII, the FNFs annual film noir festival in San Francisco.

Olga Zubarry
The festival will again take place at San Francisco's movie palace, the Castro Theatre, and run from January 24 - February 2. The festival theme for 2014 is "It's a Bitter Little World" and it will spotlight classic film noir from around the world: France, Mexico, Japan, Argentina, Germany, Spain, Norway and Great Britain as well, of course, as the good old U.S.A. 27 films will screen and two from Argentina will be making their theatrical debut in the U.S.:  No abras nunca esa puerta/Never Open That Door (1952), an anthology adapted from stories by Cornell Woolrich (Rear Window, Deadline at Dawn, The Window, Mississippi Mermaid) and El vampiro negro/The Black Vampire (1953), a remake of Fritz Lang's M starring "The Argentine Marilyn Monroe," Olga Zubarry. Both are newly restored and subtitled 35mm prints.

The full schedule for Noir City XII will be released as part of the FNF's 4th annual Noir City Xmas, a double feature event set for next Wednesday night, December 18, at the Castro Theatre; Blast of Silence (1961) and Christmas Eve (1947) will be screened.

The San Francisco festival kicks off the Noir City season, with "satellite" festivals to follow later in the year in Seattle, Austin, L.A., Chicago, Portland (OR) and Washington, D.C.

For information on Noir City and Nor City Xmas, click here.



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'TIS THE SEASON - OF GIVING...AND IT'S HAPPENING HERE!

December 16, 2013, 3:00 am
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BOOKS AND DVDS IN YOUR STOCKING THIS YEAR?

One of the things I love most about the holidays is giving gifts. This year I happen to have presents for a few classic film buffs and I'll be giving them this week.

Literally the biggest gift to be given - at 1,000+ pages - is Victoria Wilson's long-awaited, long in-process  biography, A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907 - 1940. Detailed, thorough and fascinating, Wilson traces Stanwyck's family history back to long before the future star came into the world as Ruby Stevens. The hefty tome also covers Stanwyck's show business beginnings, at a very tender age, as a dancer, her rapid rise to Broadway and Hollywood stardom, two marriages and 88 films. As well-written as it is meticulously researched, Steel-True is impossible to put down once picked up. Fifteen years in the writing, this reader only hopes Wilson's volume covering the rest of Stanwyck's life and career, from 1941 to 1990, won't take quite so long to get into print.

Here, Victoria Wilson talks about Stanwyck's appeal for her and the writing of Steel-True:


The by-invitation-only funeral of Orson Welles, who died in October 1985, took place in a downtown Los Angeles slum. His eldest daughter, Chris, who flew in from New York to attend, thought the rundown building seemed more like a "hot-sheets motel" than a funeral parlor. She was told by her stepmother, Welles's last wife from whom he had been long separated, that there was "no money" for anything more.

The one-time wunderkind's career as a filmmaker had collapsed years earlier, though he never stopped working - writing and struggling to get financing for his projects.  In his final years, one friend who stood by him and tried to both help find support for his work and bolster his confidence was independent filmmaker Henry Jaglom. The two lunched often at Hollywood's fabled Ma Maison (the bistro that made Wolfgang Puck's name) and one day Welles suggested Jaglom record their mealtime conversations. From 1983 until 1985, Jaglom did just that. Film historian Peter Biskind (Easy Riders, Raging Bulls) learned of the tapes Jaglom had made with Welles and eventually edited the content - published earlier this year as My Lunches With Orson.

The Jaglom/Welles-"unplugged" chats are intriguing and quite often dishy. And then there's the "dancing bear show," the larger-than-life persona Welles donned as occasion required. Jaglom must've felt, at times, like he was front row/center for the greatest show on earth...



Two of the most celebrated leading ladies/movie stars of the 1950s were Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly. Very different types - one dark, voluptuous and mercurial, the other a cool and stunning blonde - they are nonetheless considered two of the most beautiful and talented actresses of their era.

My final gift is a celebration, in two parts, of these mid-century icons. First, TCM's Greatest Classic Legends: Elizabeth Taylor DVD collection. The set features Vincente Minnelli's sparkling romantic comedy, Father of the Bride (1950), with Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett; the Richard Brooks production of the Tennessee Williams classic, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), co-starring Paul Newman; Butterfield 8 (1960), the drama that brought Taylor her first Oscar, directed by Daniel Mann and co-starring Laurence Harvey; and Vincente Minnelli's 1965 melodrama set in Big Sur, The Sandpiper, co-starring Richard Burton and Eva Marie Saint.  Paired with the Taylor DVD collection is Gina McKinnon's recently published What Would Grace Do?, a style guide/mini-biography of Grace Kelly (aka/Princess Grace). Lots of pointers here - useful in a world some would find lacking in classic taste and timeless style.

~

A random drawing will be held Saturday, December 21, at 5:00pm PST. I will select three winners from the names entered and the first chosen will have first pick, the second name drawn will choose from the remaining two prizes and the third winner will receive the final gift. All winners will be notified immediately.

To enter, send an email to ladyevesidwich@gmail.com with Holiday Gifts in the subject line. Please include your shipping address and let me know which gift is your first choice and which is your second (this will allow me to ship all prizes as quickly as possible).

Open to residents of the U.S. and Canada only and just one entry per household, please.

Good luck!

(Congratulations to Marsha in New York, winner of the recent random drawing for TCM's Greatest Classic Films: Astaire & Rogers, Vol. 1, DVD collection - it's on the way!)

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As the year ends, and we remember many who are now gone, one man celebrates 100 years...

December 22, 2013, 12:38 pm
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Marc Platt (shown here, in the purple shirt, in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers)turned 100 on December 2
He was born Marcel LePlat in Pasadena, California on December 2, 1913, but was raised in Seattle, Washington. His training as a dancer began at age 11 at the local dance studio of Mary Ann Wells. In his early 20s, he auditioned and was selected for the chorus of the newly formed Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo by the company's famed choreographer, Léonide Massine (The Red Shoes). His last name was changed to "Platoff" because so many of the group's dancers (as well as the company's roots) were Russian. Working his way up to become a soloist who premiered several roles as well as choreographing his own works, he remained with the the companyfor six years. His (uncredited) film debut came with the Jean Negulesco-directed short, The Gay Parisian (1941), a showcase for the Ballet Russe.

He left the troupe in 1942 and, as Marc Platt, alternated between the New York stage and the Hollywood soundstage for many years. On Broadway, he was part of the original 1943 cast of the Rogers & Hammerstein classic, Oklahoma!, creating the role of "Dream Curly."

Marc Platt and Katharine Sergava in the original Broadway production of Oklahoma!
Tonight and Every Night (1945), starring Rita Hayworth
In 1945, he co-starred with Rita Hayworth and Janet Blair in the Technicolor musical, Tonight and Every Night, but the film role for which he is best known came nine years later with Stanley Donen's Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954). Platt portrayed the fourth of the brawny "seven brothers," Daniel Pontipee. 

Here's Marc, in the purple shirt again, and "his brothers" in the legendary "barn raising" dance number (Note: the occasional hiss heard at the clip's beginning doesn't last)...


A year later, in 1955, he would appear in a speaking and dancing role in Fred Zinnemann's film adaptation of Oklahoma! starring Shirley Jones and Gordon MacRae.

Marc Platt would enjoy a multifaceted career. He acted on series TV from the 1950s into the early 1990s, served as dance director for Radio City Music Hall and went on to open his own dance studio in Florida, with his wife, dancer Jane Goodall.

At 91, Platt appeared as himself in the enchanting 2005 documentary, Ballets Russes, a film that traces the beginnings of the original Ballets Russes under Serge Diaghelev through its transformation, following Diaghelev's death in 1929, into the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo under Léonide Massine. Many of the company's dancers - in their 70s, 80s and 90s in 2005 - including Platt, are interviewed, and performance footage illustrates the company's history.

As of this writing, Mr. Platt will have at least one more credit coming his way. He is set to appear in a documentary now in post-production, Broadway: Beyond the Golden Age, a sequel to Broadway: The Golden Age (2003).

Marc Platt at the party celebrating his 100th birthday in Mill Valley, California, on December 8 (photo by Sarah Rice)
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Happy Birthday, Marlene Dietrich!

December 27, 2013, 12:00 am
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Marlene Dietrich, photograph by Edward Steichen
Marie Magdalene Dietrich was born 112 years ago today in Schöneberg, Germany. She died well into her 90th year, in Paris, in 1992, and was by then known the world over as Marlene Dietrich, archetypal superstar of the silver  screen as well as the cabaret and concert stage.

As a child, Dietrich contracted her first name, added her nickname (pronounced Layna) and became "Marlene"
I've long been fascinated by the Dietrich persona and have extravagantly enjoyed and admired the seven films she made with Josef von Sternberg, the first for UFA in Germany, the rest for Paramount in the U.S.: The Blue Angel (1930),Morocco (1930), Dishonored (1931), Shanghai Express (1932), Blonde Venus (1932), The Scarlet Empress (1934) and The Devil is a Woman (1935). She has been the subject of several blog entries here.

The Devil is a Woman (1935)
My earliest Dietrich posts for Reel Life were published in a series on the von Sternberg/Dietrich partnership -Light, Shadow and Synergy,Part I,Part IIandPart III- a reflection on the films they made together and the nature of their collaboration. I am regularly tempted to revise the whole thing but fear that if I do the series might grow to four, five or even six parts. Recently, though, I came upon this pieceby Anne Helen Peterson, a wise, witty and wicked assessment of the fabulous star, and decided to leave well enough alone.

Dietrich in Travis Banton, from her personal wardrobe
"I dress for the image. Not for myself, not for the public, not for fashion, not for men."
- Marlene Dietrich

Marlene Dietrich by David Downton
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A New Year's Moment

December 31, 2013, 9:00 pm
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As 2013 departs, 2014 arrives with flair - courtesy of elegant and stylish Mr. Fred Astaire...


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A Touch of Lubitsch - Tuesday on TCM

January 25, 2014, 10:17 pm
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Loves of Pharaoh (1929) stars Emil Jannings
Beginning at 6:15 am Eastern/3:15 am Pacific on Tuesday, January 28, Turner Classic Movies will treat its viewers to thirteen hours of 'the Lubitsch Touch'.

Kicking off TCM's birthday tribute/Lubitsch-fest will be the spectacular The Loves of Pharaoh (1922), a grand silent historical epic. Made in Germany and financed by Paramount's European film Alliance (EFA), the film would be the last in the series of such epics Lubitsch directed during his reign as something of a 'German DeMille.' He was soon on his way to America, where his star would continue to rise.

To Be or Not to Be (1942), Carole Lombard and Jack Benny
TCM's seven film tribute will close in the early evening/afternoon with one of the director's great masterpieces, To Be or Not to Be(1942), a stunning savage/hilarious satire starring the divinely paired Carole Lombard and Jack Benny. In between, viewers will have the chance to enjoy hours of Lubitsch's  wit, sophistication and precision in classics ranging from The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927) a silent film made in the U.S., starring Ramon Novarro and Norma Shearer, to The Merry Widow (1934, Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald), Ninotchka (1939, Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas), one of his very, very finest - The Shop Around the Corner(1940, James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan) and That Uncertain Feeling (1941, Merle Oberon, Melvyn Douglas).


Ernst Lubitsch (1892 - 1947) got his start as an actor and was a member of Max Reinhardt's famed Deutsches Theater company from 1911 - 1918. He began acting in films in 1913 and went on to appear in his own pictures. His final onscreen performance was a starring role in Sumurun (1920), which he directed in Germany, as 'Yeggar - the hunchback.'

Lubitsch emigrated to the U.S. in 1923, following the success of Loves of Pharaoh, making his American directorial debut with Rosita (1923), starring Mary Pickford. He made his way around Hollywood early on - working for Warners, United Artists and MGM, but it was at Paramount that, for a time, he made his home, eventually becoming director of production. Later in his career he would work for MGM and produce independently, but his final films were made under contract to 20th Century Fox. Unfortunately, his health was failing by that time...  

Nominated for three Best Director Oscars over the course of his career, Ernst Lubitsch was recognized by the Academy in 1947 with an honorary award for 25 years of"distinguished contributions to the art of the motion picture." Eight months later, in November 1947, at the age of 55, Lubitsch died of a heart attack, his sixth. His final film project had been That Lady in Ermine, a Betty Grable vehicle that was completed by Otto Preminger and released in 1948.

Billy Wilder, for whom Lubitsch had been mentor, famously kept a sign on the wall of his office in tribute to the master he forever admired, "What would Lubitsch have done?"

Greta Garbo and Ernst Lubitsch on the set of Ninotcka
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Now Playing in San Francisco: Noir City XII

January 28, 2014, 11:01 pm
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San Francisco's annual Noir City film noir festival is in progress now at the city's iconic movie palace, the Castro Theatre.

This year the festival theme is international and features noir from Argentina, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Spain and - of course - Hollywood. Though the festival is at its mid-point, many great classics have yet to be screened:

  

For more on the Film Noir Foundation's Noir City XII, click here.
 
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Welcome back, Christian!

January 30, 2014, 5:03 pm
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A week or so ago Silver Screen Modiste, the website of my dear blogger friend Christian Esquevin, was hi-jacked. When he discovered that he was no longer in possession of his site's domain name, Christian also discovered it would now cost him an arm and a leg to try to get it back. Instead, he has reconstituted it as Silver Screen Modes and, as of today, Christian is back online with more fascinating insights on classic film costume design.

Click here to visit Silver Screen Modes and enjoy Christian's assessment of the costume design nominees for the 2013 Academy Awards.

Zhang Ziyi in Wong Kar Wai's The Grandmaster, Oscar-nominated for Best Costume Design
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Reel San Francisco Stories

February 17, 2014, 11:22 am
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Christopher Pollock's annotated filmography of the San Francisco Bay Area

While visiting Northern California, evangelist Billy Graham once commented, "The Bay Area is so beautiful, I hesitate to preach about heaven while I'm here." Not only lovely, the region is also uniquely photogenic, and many, many films - more than 600 - have been shot in San Francisco and the surrounding area over the past nearly 90 years.

My interest in local film locations and history dates back to the 1990s when I worked in offices located at 170 Maiden Lane, a building that had, years earlier, been part of Ransohoffs, a high-end San Francisco department store. The offices were posh, with lofty ceilings, wide archways and other elegant touches. Notably, the archway motif was echoed by tall arched mirrors that adorned several walls. I learned that the floor had once housed Ransohoffs' dress salon. And then one day an architect (the company I worked for was a design firm specializing in destination resorts and hotels) told me that a classic scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo had taken place within our walls. This bit of information motivated me to do some research and I learned that though the sequence in which Scottie Ferguson takes Judy Barton shopping for a new wardrobe had not actually been filmed on site, Hitchcock had replicated the setting - precisely - on a Hollywood sound stage, just as he had recreated the Podesta Baldocchi florist shop and Ernie's restaurant for the film.

"Ransohoffs"Vertigo (1958)
Note the arched mirror detail behind Kim Novak
30+ years on, a Christmas tree graced the dress salon area depicted in Vertigo
A few years later I came across a book that boosted my interest in Bay Area film locations to a new level: Jeff Kraft and Aaron Levinthal's singular Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco. Within its covers I found a trove of detail on the locations used not only in Vertigo, but also Shadow of a Doubt, The Birds, Psycho and more. Once I started blogging, I began to make use of some of what I'd learned in that book and others and online, becoming something of a film location geek in the process and eventually making a 6-minute video I called San Francisco Movie Locations, a Mini-Tour. 

Then, just last week, Christopher Pollock's new book Reel San Francisco Stories arrived in the mail and I've been perusing it intently ever since, filling its pages with small green post-its to mark tidbits of interest, like:
  • The farm depicted in The Farmer's Daughter (1947, Loretta Young and Joseph Cotten) was the Scott Ranch on Adobe Road in Penngrove, California (in Sonoma County, North of San Francisco) and the two-story Victorian home, outbuildings and silo shown in the film were all demolished long ago; all that remains of the ranch today is the "rolling landscape."
  • Aunt Polly (Jane Wyman), the chilly spinster who took in her niece Pollyanna(1960, Hayley Mills), lived in one of the Bay Area's most idyllic locations, the Wine Country. The film's locations were shot in towns like Napa and St. Helena in Napa County and Santa Rosa, the county seat of Sonoma County. Lucky Pollyanna! 
When I discovered that Storm Center (1956, Bette Davis) was shot in Santa Rosa and that the town's Carnegie Library was a pivotal location, I realized why that ivy-draped library building and the trees enclosing it had always seemed so familiar to me. Alfred Hitchcock had used the same library in Shadow of a Doubt (1943) for the scene in which Young Charlie (Teresa Wright) rushes to its doors just at closing time.

Santa Rosa's Carnegie Library, Shadow of Doubt (1943)

Bette Davis in Storm Center (1956)
Pollock catalogs the hundreds of films set in the Bay Area from the early 20th century (Behind That Curtain, Fox, 1929) to very recent times (Blue Jasmine, Paramount, 2013, Cate Blanchett). Each entry includes release year, studio, director, stars, some behind-the-camera crew, a brief synopsis of the plot and a list of locations featured (addresses included). But this book is more than a lengthy film index. On most pages, adjacent to one or two films, is supplemental background on persons or places or events related to the particular movie(s). For example, accompanying the entry on This Earth is Mine (1959, Rock Hudson, Jean Simmons) is a brief history of the Napa Valley's Inglenook Vineyard, a site featured in the film, from its beginnings in 1879 to its present status as the award-winning winery of director Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather series, Apocalypse, Now), who has become an accomplished vintner as well as filmmaker.
 
Francis Coppola's Inglenook (once known as Niebaum-Coppola and, later, Rubicon Estate) in Rutherford

And there is more. By way of an introduction, Pollock provides concise but wide-ranging historical background on film in the Bay Area. Going back to the inception of moving pictures, he tells of the Muybridge-Stanford "experiments" of the 1870s in which Mr. Muybridge took serial photographs of a horse belonging to his patron, former California governor Leland Stanford, at Stanford's Palo Alto Stock Farm. The photos of the running horse were copied to a disc in the form of silhouettes and projected onto a screen by a machine Muybridge had invented. As these images appeared in quick succession, the horse seemed to gallop. As one Muybridge biographer has noted, these images held "the primal DNA" of movies, TV and video games - not to mention the moving pictures that so fascinate those of us who regularly roam the Internet...

THE PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHY OF EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE
 
Among the many Bay Area notables Pollock mentions who have made appearances in locally filmed movies was the San Francisco Chronicle's Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, Herb Caen (1916 - 1997), who had a bit part as a reporter in Nora Prentiss (1947, Ann Sheridan). The oft-quoted wag, who was besotted with the City by the Bay, memorably quipped, "One day...if I go to heaven, I'll look around and say, 'It ain't bad, but it ain't San Francisco.'" Clearly, I agree. But I have to admit that my interests extend beyond the San Francisco Bay Area and, in the past, I've happily explored historic locales in New York and Hollywood as well as a tiny island just off the coast of Southern California.

~

Many thanks to Christopher Pollock for a review copy of Reel San Francisco Stories, an essential resource and valued addition to my library of books on film.


San Francisco's Spreckels Mansion in Pal Joey (1957, Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak, Rita Hayworth)
The Spreckels Mansion in San Francisco's Pacific Heights neighborhood, 2013

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Coming Soon: Roman à clef

February 26, 2014, 3:48 pm
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According to J.E. Luebering of the Encyclopædia Britannica, a roman à clef ("novel with a key") is a work of fiction that has "the extraliterary interest of portraying well-known real people more or less thinly disguised as fictional characters." This tradition apparently began in 17th-century France, "when fashionable members of the aristocratic literary coteries...enlivened their historical romances by including in them fictional representations of well-known figures in the court of Louis XIV." Modern novels, short stories, films and television dramas have dutifully, sometimes scandalously, continued this longstanding tradition:
  • Somerset Maugham's 1919 novel, The Moon and Sixpence, the saga of an English stockbroker who abandons his family to become an artist and live out his years pursuing his passion in Tahiti, was loosely based on the life of French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin. The novel was adapted to the screen in 1942 (starring George Sanders), served as the basis for an opera of the same name in 1957 and made its way to television in 1959 with Laurence Olivier in the starring role.
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald, who toiled as a Hollywood screenwriter during the last years of his life, based his final, unfinished (in his lifetime) novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon (aka/The Last Tycoon) on Irving Thalberg's rise to power and his struggles with Louis B. Mayer at MGM. Elia Kazan's 1976 film, The Last Tycoon, was adapted for the screen by Harold Pinter and starred Robert De Niro and Robert Mitchum.
Ann-Margret and Claudette Colbert
  • In 1976, Truman Capote's blistering short story, "La Côte Basque 1965," appeared in Esquire magazine with devastating fallout for the diminutive writer/café society doyenne. Those whose lives he'd barely veiled were the cream of New York society, and he was instantly and permanently ostracized from their circle. A few years later, in 1985, Dominick Dunne wrote a best-selling novel, The Two Mrs. Grenvilles, using the Capote debacle as a jumping off point for his own very fictionalized account of one of the most sensational stories alluded to in "La Côte Basque." Dunne's book was adapted to the small screen in 1987 and starred Ann-Margret and Claudette Colbert (in her final onscreen performance, for which she won a Golden Globe).
  • 1996 brought Primary Colors, a tell-all political fiction by Joe Klein that was brought to the screen the following year by Mike Nichols and featured John Travolta doing a recognizable impression of Bill Clinton as he portrayed "Jack Stanton."
Over the next few months, I'll be posting a series that explores films like A Star is Born (1937, 1954, etc.), Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947), All About Eve (1950), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and Two Weeks in Another Town (1962), all of them, to a greater or lesser degree, roman à clefs... 

Two Weeks in Another Town (1962)

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Beginning this Spring - Classic Film Nights in California’s Wine Country

March 10, 2014, 6:00 am
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The historic Napa Valley Opera House on Main Street in Napa, California, first opened its doors in 1880 with a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore. Those doors closed in 1914, the theater having sustained damage from San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake and changing times - vaudeville was in decline and movies were growing ever more dominant. The historic building was saved from the wrecking ball in the 1970s when it was added to the National Registry of Historic Places and, a few years later, due largely to a challenge grant from the Mondavi family, money was raised for its restoration. In 2003, the theater’s doors opened once more.

Late in 2013, the Opera House entered into a long-term lease with Michael Dorf, founder and CEO of the City Winery organization. City Winery establishments – now in New York and Chicago - combine music venue, events space, restaurant and urban winery. At the venues in Manhattan and the Windy City winemakers crush and ferment grapes on site but because Napa is in the very heart of California’s wine country and surrounded on all sides by wineries large and small, winemaking won’t be among this location’s offerings. However, City Winery Napa will feature many wines on tap - and of the 35 wines to be offered, 30 will be from local wineries.


$2.3 million in upgrades are in progress now at the historic landmark and a “soft launch” of the venue is set to take place in April, May and June.

Along with live entertainment events, Napa’s City Winery will also present a monthly “Tuesday Night Flicks” program. So far, three legendary classics are on the schedule and I can't wait to see them at the redesigned opera house and report back...
 

 
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Classic Hollywood Films, Classic Foreign Posters

March 16, 2014, 6:00 am
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Notorious (1946) - French movie poster
I love the posters of France, Italy, Spain, Germany and other countries of Western and Eastern Europe that were created for movies made during Hollywood's golden years. This tiny ‘gallery’ contains some of my favorites, all of them evocative and most as exciting as the films they publicize. 

The Rains Came (1939) -Italian movie poster
In the foreground of this Italian artwork for The Rains Came (La Grande Pioggia - 'the big rain') is Major Rama Safti (Tyrone Power), beautiful, unattainable and noble. Beside him is Lady Edwina Esketh (Myrna Loy), consumed with longing for him. Wind swept sheets of rain fall from heavy clouds in a blackened sky. Tom Ransome (George Brent) registers alarm as chaos descends...
 
Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) - German movie poster
The tone of this German poster art for Breakfast at Tiffany's seems less lighthearted than the much more familiar American artwork associated with the film. And yet...jazzy aqua, violet and blue accents are scattered everywhere - in Audrey Hepburn/Holly Golightly's hair, her necklace and earrings, the glove, her one aqua/one violet eyebrows...


Out of the Past (1947) - movie poster from Spain
Poster art for Out of the Past without a trace of Jane Greer's face or figure are rare, indeed. But this atmospheric image of Mitchum in his trench coat kneeling over Steve Brodie in a pool of blood makes a powerful and lasting impression.

Bad Day at Black (1955) - movie poster from Poland
'Czarny dzien w Black Rock' translates to 'black day at Black Rock' and this deep blue and black poster art from Poland suggests the lurking malevolence that greets Spencer Tracy when he arrives in Black Rock.

Dark Victory (1939) - movie poster from Italy
'Tramonto' is Italian for 'sunset' and the shadow sweeping across Bette Davis's eyes in this Italian poster is an allusion to Judith Traherne's soon-to-come blindness - and death.
 
This Gun for Hire (1942) - French movie poster
This gorgeous poster is the work of Boris Grinsson - a master of classic poster art. Obviously. 
Four more from France, clockwise from top left: Bonjour Tristesse (1958), Nightmare Alley (1947), another take on Notorious (1946) and Dead Reckoning (1947).
Click here for a two part series on French posters for American crime and noir films. Click here to visit the Museum of Movie Posters.

An interesting take on Sunset Blvd. (1950) from Poland
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APRIL IN HOLLYWOOD

March 24, 2014, 5:31 pm
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GETTING READY FOR THE 2014 TCM CLASSIC FILM FESTIVAL

The full schedule of screenings and events set for TCM’s 5thannual classic film festival had just posted on the network’s website and I was eager to see what the four days and nights from April 10 – 13 have in store. As I scrolled through the listings for each day, I began feeling a little panicky. So many choices and so little time! To quote Holly Golightly out of context, “I must say, the mind reels!”

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) screens on April 11
Twenty-five (count 'em) "Essentials" are on the bill, including American Graffiti (1973), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Double Indemnity (1944), Gone with the Wind (1939), A Hard Day's Night (1964), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Stagecoach (1939), The Thin Man (1934), The Wizard of Oz (1939) and The Women (1939). In addition, 2014's roster of special guests will include Alec Baldwin, Mel Brooks, Tim Conway, Richard Dreyfuss, directors William Friedkin and Norman Jewison, composer Quincy Jones, Shirley Jones, Jerry Lewis, Kim Novak, Margaret O'Brien, Maureen O'Hara, Ryan O'Neal, Paula Prentiss, Jane Seymour and composer John Williams.

How Green was My Valley (1941) screens April 12 - Maureen O'Hara appears in person
And among films on the festival's "Discoveries" program are Tod Browning's Freaks (1932), The Great Gatsby (1949), starring Alan Ladd, Hat Check Girl (1932), a pre-code find, Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar (1954), Jules Dassin's The Naked City (1948), On Approval, the only film directed by actor Clive Brook, and William Friedkin's Sorcerer (1977).

All in all, films of eight decades, beginning with the early '20s through the mid-'90s, will be presented - from Harold Lloyd's final film for Hal Roach, Why Worry? (1923) to Mr. Holland's Opus (1995) starring Richard Dreyfuss (who will appear in-person at the screening).

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) screens April 13
The festival is, for the classic film lover, 'an embarrassment of riches' and my only problem is that I want to see everything, and that's not possible.
 
On Day One, April 10, will I see the newly restored Oklahoma! (1955), with special guest Shirley Jones, or  Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), with Charles Busch (actor/playwright/Bette Davis impersonator) in-person, or, possibly, American Grafitti with Candy Clark, Bo Hopkins and Paul LeMat as special guests? And later that night, I'll have to choose between between the new restoration of Johnny Guitar (presented by film historian Michael Schlesinger) and The Heiress (1949).

Day Two is even more daunting. In the morning, will it be The Thin Man or Stagecoach? In the afternoon, it's Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) vs. Invasion of the Body Snatchers vs. "A Conversation with Richard Dreyfuss" vs. "Ask Robert Osborne" and "A Conversation with William Friedkin." Later that evening, I'm determined to see Double Indemnity and The Innocents (1961), no matter what.

Jack Clayton's The Innocents (1961), starring Deborah Kerr, screens April 11

I'm hoping I'll be able to cover Jerry Lewis's handprint ceremony at Grauman's on the morning of Day Three, but if there's no room, I'll be forced to choose between Vincente Minnelli's Father of the Bride (1950) and Chaplin's City Lights (1931). After that, I don't want to miss "A Conversation with Thelma Schoonmaker," Martin Scorsese's Oscar-winning film editor (and the widow of legendary filmmaker Michael Powell), but I'll have to hustle to get from there to the screening of the Alan Ladd version of The Great Gatsby, which I don't want to miss. Then, in the early evening, another killer decision will to have to be made - The Beatles in A Hard Days Night, or Bell Book and Candle (1958) with special guest Kim Novak, or The Godfather Part II (1974), orDouglas Sirk's Written on the Wind (1956), or The Nutty Professor (1963), with special guest Jerry Lewis.

Dorothy Malone won an Oscar for her performance in Written on the Wind (1956), screening April 12

Day Four, the final day of the festival, still has a lot of "TBA" on the schedule, so I'm not going to think too much about that yet, tomorrow is another day...


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Celebrating Tyrone Power’s 100th Birthday

March 28, 2014, 6:00 am
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A One Day Blogathon on May 5

Monday, May 5th is the 100th anniversary of Hollywood mega-star Tyrone Power’s birth, and Patti of They Don’t Make ‘Em Like They Used Toand Iwill be hosting a blogathon in celebration of his life and career - Power-Mad, a one-day event.

Participants are invited to review the actor’s films (one blogger per film, please), post a photo spread or a biographical essay (you might cover his life in general or strictly his movie career, his military service during World War II or his post-war stage career, or...) – basically, feel free to get creative.

If you'd like to participate please send an email to me (Patty) at
ladyevesidwich@gmail.com or to Patti at pattiamg27@gmail.com and include your name, your blog's name and web address, and the title/subject of your post. Or leave a comment here.

Participating blogs/websites:
  • Thrilling Days of Yesteryear: Nightmare Alley (1947)
  • Immortal Ephemera: The Films of Tyrone Power and Alice Faye (In Old   Chicago, Alexander's Ragtime Band, Rose of Washington Square)
  • Barry Bradford (barrybradford.com): The Razor's Edge (1946)
  • Movie Classics: Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
  • Shadows and Satin: Blood and Sand (1941)
  • Tyrone-Power.com: A Very Special Memorabilia Collection
  • Lasso the Movies: Jesse James (1939)
  • Classic Film Freak: The Mark of Zorro (1940)
  • Laura's Miscellaneous Musings: This Above All (1942)
  • The Nitrate Diva: Café Metropole (1937)
  • Silver Screen Modes: Johnny Apollo (1940)
  • Old Hollywood: King of the Khyber Rifles (1953)
  • Citizen Screen: The Black Swan (1942)
  • Slightly Shabby: Marie Antoinette (1938)
  • Twenty Four Frames: Rawhide (1951)
  • Sidewalk Crossings: Crash Dive (1942)

Banners:

 





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Roman à Clef, Part I: All About Eve...and Margo

March 31, 2014, 6:00 am
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In black-and-white, from left: Tallulah Bankhead, Bette Davis and Elisabeth Bergner; front and center: Bette Davis, Gary Merrill and Anne Baxter in a color still for All About Eve (1950)

In the spring of 1987 Joseph Mankiewicz was staying at the Hotel Cipriani on the lagoon in Venice, Italy, where he had come to be honored with a prestigious Leone d'Oro award. While there he received an unexpected call one day from a woman he described as "absolutely desperate-sounding." What she said to him came as a surprise - and he didn't believe her:

"Mr. Mankiewicz, this is Eve...the Eve you wrote the movie about. I was the girl who stood outside the theatre..."
~

Nearly 40 years earlier, in 1950, Mankiewicz had directed and penned the screenplay for the bewitching and bitchy satire that came to be known as his masterpiece: All About Eve, winner of six Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay. A sophisticated and cautionary tale of a celebrated Broadway actress named Margo Channing and the unscrupulous 'fan' known as Eve Harrington who finesses her way into the great star's life, All About Eve was nominated for 14 Oscars, topping the record held until then by Gone with the Wind. Bette Davis delivered one of her great star turns as Margo and saw her career exhumed. George Sanders was blessed with a plum role, the part of a lifetime, and an Oscar for his performance as theater critic Addison DeWitt. And for then-starlet Marilyn Monroe came the chance to shimmer, if only for a few moments, in her first A-budget 'prestige' film.

All About Eve's everlasting reputation as a classic among classics rests heavily on Mankiewicz's very smart screenplay and direction, its three larger-than-life central characters (Channing, Harrington and DeWitt) and the solid performances of its ensemble cast members. 

In the background, from left: Gary Merrill, Celeste Holm, George Sanders, Marilyn Monroe and Hugh Marlowe; in the foreground, Anne Baxter (Eve Harrington) and Bette Davis
From the beginning there had been whispers that the story of an older, established actress who is duped by a young ambitious one willing to do anything to succeed had been taken from real life. Joe Mankiewicz hadn't conceived his screenplay out of thin air, it was based on a story that had appeared in Cosmpolitan (then a literary magazine) in 1946. Titled The Wisdom of Eve, the short story was written by Mary Orr, a young actress herself, who received no screen credit for her original work. Well, the story wasn't quite originally hers.

Basil Rathbone and Elisabeth Bergner in Paris Calling (1942)
From 1943 to 1944, Mary Orr's future husband, Reginald Denham, had directed The Two Mrs. Carrolls during its run on Broadway. The star of the play was Elisabeth Bergner, a much-honored, Oscar-nominated Viennese actress known as "the Garbo of the stage"in Europe. Bergner had made films in Germany but was filming in London when the the Nazis came to power and decided it would be wise to stay in England. There she starred in The Rise of Catherine the Great (1934) with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Escape Me Never (1935), for which she received a Best Actress Oscar nomination (a Hollywood remake starring Ida Lupino was released in 1947),  As You Like It (1936) with a young Laurence Olivier, and Stolen Life (1939) with Michael Redgrave, (re-made in the U.S. in 1946 as A Stolen Life starring Bette Davis). Bergner and her husband, director Paul Czinner, came to the U.S. in 1940. She made Paris Calling for Universal with Randolph Scott and Basil Rathbone in 1942, but it was not a hit and she shifted her focus to stage work.

A few months after The Two Mrs. Carrolls closed, in the summer of 1944, Mr. Denham and Miss Orr paid a visit to Elisabeth Bergner and her husband at their rented home in the New Hampshire. That evening, when the women were alone in the kitchen - Bergner was whipping up Wienerschnitzel, Orr was observing - the older actress began to talk about something that had occurred during the play's production. She spoke of a young woman she referred to as "that awful creature," a girl she had first noticed standing in an alleyway next to the theater. The girl had been conspicuous because she wore a red coat and because she was there every night.

"Eve" in the shadows, in an alley
Bergner told Orr that she eventually invited the girl into her dressing room, touched by her apparent devotion. The girl, whose name was Ruth Hirsch, soon became an assistant to Bergner and secretary to her husband. The couple came to learn that Ruth aspired to be an actress and helped her get permission from Actors' Equity to make her debut on Broadway. The girl seems to have had some talent because she went on to win a John Golden Award, an annual theatrical prize given to young actresses, that same year.

What actually took place while Ruth Hirsch was part of the Bergner/Czinner entourage will never be known for certain, but Bergner complained bitterly to Orr that the girl had been deceitful, schemed behind her back and even attempted to seduce her husband.

As Mary Orr and Reginald Denham drove back to their hotel after dinner that night she repeated Bergner's story to him and asked if he remembered  a girl in a red coat who'd lingered by the stage door during the run of The Two Mrs. Carrolls. He did, and he also recalled that the girl came to nearly every performance. The next morning Denham suggested to Orr, who had already done a little writing, that she put Bergner's story on paper. "It's a hell of a story," he said.

The Wisdom of Eve was published in the May 1946 issue of Cosmopolitan and in January 1949 Orr's radio play version of the story was performed on NBC's Radio Guild Playhouse. Presently, Hollywood came knocking.

~

Tallulah Bankhead
A painful but, in the end, felicitous thing happened to the leading lady just before filming of All About Eve was about to begin. Bette Davis had a long, very loud argument with her estranged/soon to be ex-husband and the quarrel left her throat raw and bleeding. When she arrived on the set she could only speak in a ragged near-whisper. She was beside herself, but Joe Mankiewicz liked the effect of what he called Bette's "bourbon contralto" and urged her to continue using the voice even after she healed. Bette noted that she sounded an awfully lot like Tallulah Bankhead, whose distinctive basso tones were known to be authentically and thoroughly whiskey-soaked.

Miss Bankhead, whose stage and film career had already plateaued, happened to have a radio show on NBC at the time the filmwas released. One night, while on the air, she was asked if she had seen All About Eve and her dry reply was, "Every morning when I brush my teeth." She was convinced that the mercurial and flamboyant Margo Channing had been based on her. She would make oblique commentary on Bette Davis's characterization of Margo in her 1952 autobiography with sly reference to "busybodies" who believed Bette had patterned her Margo on Tallulah, emulating everything about her including her 'bark and bite.'

In 1952 Tallulah finally had her chance to play Margo. It was a radio adaptation of All About Eve that, interestingly, co-starred Mary Orr as Karen Richards, Celeste Holm's film role. According to Orr, Tallulah approached her after a rehearsal and asked her point-blank if Margo had been based on her. Orr said no, that the character was modeled on Elisabeth Bergner. Tallulah was livid and, outside rehearsals, never spoke to Orr after that. Perhaps Tallulah had believed that it was more than her persona and style that had been the inspiration for Margo, but the fact that she had once hired a young fan as her personal assistant was simple coincidence. Ruth Hirsch worked for Bergner for only a matter of months, whereas Tallulah's aide was with her for decades - and had never been an aspiring actress.

Mary Orr may not have had Tallulah Bankhead in mind when she created Margo (called Margola in her story), but Joseph Mankiewicz's screenplay was by no means a strict adaptation of The Wisdom of Eve. He'd kept the plot line and most of the central characters, but what he wrote for the screen was signature Mankiewicz, beginning to end. It has been speculated that he may have been influenced by what he knew about Tallulah, her career and her lifestyle, and, consciously or unconsciously, incorporated some of it into the development of Margo's character. And yet, it's hard to imagine Claudette Colbert, whom he had originally cast to play Margo, being anyone's first choice to portray a Tallulah Bankhead doppelgänger...

Edith Head costume sketch for Bette Davis
However, Edith Head, who designed Bette's costumes for the film, took Tallulah as an inspiration early on. Head later said that she had immersed herself in Tallulah's style when she went to work on Bette's wardrobe so that "everything looked as if it was made for her, yet the clothes complimented Bette." On the other hand, when a reporter asked Bette if her "throaty" voice was a parody of Tallulah's, she flatly denied it, adding, "Do you think we want to get sued?"In fact, the actress felt a strong sense of identification with the character of Margo Channing.

~

And what about 'Eve' - was the frantic woman who'd telephoned Joe Mankiewicz in Venice in 1987 telling the truth?

A few years after she made that call, the woman, who was known as Martina Lawrence, traveled from her home in Venice to New York. While there, she contacted a journalist at the Daily News who specialized in celebrity profiles and had already done pieces on Celeste Holm and Joe Mankiewicz. Lawrence told him she wanted to tell her side of the story. The writer was interested and in the process of getting to know her, he arranged for a tea at Sardi's - and invited Mary Orr to come along. Orr had not seen the woman, formerly known as Ruth Hirsch, since 1946 when she barged, uninvited, into Orr's home. It seems she had just read The Wisdom of Eve in  Cosmopolitan and was threatening to sue (that didn't happen and Orr went on to publish another story about Miss Harrington, More About Eve, in Cosmopolitan in 1951). Not surprisingly, the tea at Sardi's was contentious at times, with the two women bickering over what had happened in the long-distant past.

Mary Orr and Martina Lawrence at Sardi's in the early 1990s
Lawrence was in New York again in 1999, this time to see an old friend who had a supporting role in Marlene, a Broadway production starring Sian Phillips as Dietrich. By this time writer Sam Staggs was deep into his everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know book on All About Eve and, not wanting to miss his chance to meet the apparently 'real Eve,' flew to New York to interview her. The woman he met was now in her 70s, very thin, prickly and assertive. And theatrical.  She told him she had been born in Chicago in 1921 and, perhaps because her mother was mentally unstable and abusive, had spent much of her childhood in orphanages. She had picked up her British-sounding accent in childhood, she told him, from watching movies.

According to Martina Lawrence, she met Paul Czinner when she went to see The Two Mrs. Carrolls for the first time. She got to know him and began helping him hail cabs for Bergner after her performances. It wasn't long before she began working for the director and his wife. The situation started to unravel when Bergner caught Lawrence reading her part at a rehearsal with a new cast member one afternoon. Then, a letter arrived for the actress, purportedly from someone who had witnessed Lawrence's rehearsal performance and was awed by her talent. Bergner later said that she always thought Lawrence had written the letter herself. In any case, Lawrence surreptitiously snatched it from Bergner's dressing gown and soon found herself barred from the theater.

Though Bergner was no longer speaking to her, the younger woman soldiered on and soon entered the competition for the John Golden awards. She won one of four given and this eventually led to a brief Hollywood sojourn. As for her name change, Lawrence told Staggs it was Bergner who had, through an intermediary, recommended that she take a stage name - and suggested 'Martina Lawrence.' The name was that of one of the two characters Bergner portrayed in Stolen Life (the names were changed for the Bette Davis production).

Martina Lawrence insisted that she had never deceived Elisabeth Bergner, that the actress had imagined all of it. There were those who believed her and those who did not. One acquaintance who'd known her from her early Broadway years reported, with conviction, that Lawrence had also made her way into the inner circle of opera legend Renata Tebaldi and "played Eve Harrington to her" for a while. The friend indicated that this incident wasn't widely known because, in the lofty realm of opera, "Divas don't like to admit they've been had."


Sources:

All About All About Eve by Sam Staggs, St. Martin's Press (2000)
Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis by Ed Sikov, Henry Holt & Co. (2007)
New York Times obituary for Mary Orr, October 6, 2006



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HOLLYWOOD DAYS AND NIGHTS

April 22, 2014, 8:20 am
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A FIRST-TIMER'S NOTES ON THE 2014 TCM CLASSIC FILM FESTIVAL 

Mid-day Thursday, April 10, as I waited for my repeatedly delayed flight to depart SFO for Burbank, I had to admit to myself that I'd made a miscalculation in planning my trip to the TCM Classic Film Festival.  I'd known for a few days that I would be arriving too late to attend both the Wednesday night "Tweetup" party I'd been invited to and the Press Day event set for Thursday morning. Now I was beginning to wonder whether I'd even arrive in time to check in at the festival press office and be able to attend opening night events.

By the time my plane finally landed and I managed to get to the Roosevelt Hotel, the press office was closed and its staff was down the street working the red carpet. Luckily for me, my contact, a hard-working member of the PR team named Chelsea, came back to the hotel as quickly as she could and signed me in. Armed with badge and goody bag, I was off to the entrance of the Chinese Theatre and got there just as most of the press and spectators were leaving the red carpet area. But Tippi Hedren was as late as I was and so I had a chance to snap a few quick photos of her before she moved on and the carpet was retired for the evening.
 
Tippi Hedren, April 10, on the red carpet


Soon I was rushing to the screening of Robert Aldrich’s darkest-black comedy, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) at the Chinese Multiplex 1. On my way I (almost literally) ran into online friend/blogger Kay Noske but we were headed in different directions and had just moments to say hello. I can tell you, though, that she looked, as I expected, most glamorous.

Bette Davis as Jane Hudson
Charles Busch, actor/writer/female impersonator, introduced What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? with a nod to its stature as prototypical ‘Grand Dame Guignol’ and high camp. He also praised Bette Davis, whose turn as Jane is madly flamboyant, for the psychological acuity with which she interpreted the title role. Baby Jane on the big screen is a wild ride, an exaggerated and exciting mix of horror, pathos and outrageous camp. As I watched, I couldn’t help but imagine how much fun Bette must’ve had chewing the scenery as the crazed former child star.  Made on a limited budget, Baby Jane was the first American movie to recoup its costs in a single weekend…the weekend following Halloween 1962. And then came the flood of psycho-biddie horror films it inspired (Strait-Jacket, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, etc.).

As Baby Jane approached its grim conclusion it occurred to me that I hadn't eaten a thing since before noon. Because I hadn't had time to check out the eateries at the Hollywood Highland Center or the Roosevelt, I decided it would be easier to grab a bite at my hotel. Dinner and a glass of wine would mark the end of my first day in Hollywood.
~ 
 
Googie Withers and Clive Brook in On Approval; Claire Trevor and John Wayne in Stagecoach

Friday, festival day two, was the first full day of scheduled events, and the slate was a maze of often difficult choices. I’d committed to seeing one of my all-time favorite films, John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939), in the morning, though I was very curious about On Approval (1944), the only film actor Clive Brook (Marlene Dietrich’s leading man in Shanghai Express) ever directed. Plus, stage legend Beatrice Lillie had co-starred with Brook in On Approval. But I’d never seen Stagecoach on the big screen and couldn’t resist the opportunity.

Nancy Schoenberger, author and contributing editor to Vanity Fair, introduced the film. Currently at work on a book about the Ford/Wayne collaboration, she shared anecdotes and backstory on Stagecoach. She reported that Ford had had to fight to cast Wayne as the Ringo Kid because the studio believed the young actor was too much associated with the string of B-movie Westerns he'd been making over the years. And she told us that Wayne admitted to modeling his onscreen persona on the mannerisms and movement of iconic stuntman Yakima Canutt. Canutt performed many stunts for Stagecoach, including one that is the stuff of legend:

Stuntman Vic Armstrong (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Blade Runner) on Yakima Canutt's famous Stagecoach"drop"

Though the print wasn't perfect, nothing could lessen my pleasure in watching John Ford's great classic - with its superb screenplay, photography, editing and performances - on a theater screen with a rapt audience. 

Following Stagecoach, I was off to the Hollywood Highland Center to pick up something I’d neglected to bring with me and to GET SOMETHING TO EAT while I had the chance.

Kimberly Truhler with Cybill Shepherd at the 2013 festival
On my way to the Roosevelt to meet someone I’d known online for several years, I spied Kimberly Truhler whose blog, GlamAmor, I follow and whose webinars I've attended. You can’t miss Kimberly – tall and blonde in high heels of a bold primary shade that flawlessly matches her dress - and would recognize without having to ask that she’s worked in fashion and has an affinity for classic Hollywood style. We chatted until we were inside the hotel where she turned to go into Club TCM and I entered the lobby to meet my waiting friend.

I initially got to know Brandon Goco at TCM’s Classic Film Union, its online fan site, where both of us were blogging a few years ago. He was still in high school and winning awards for his film projects in those days. Brandon participated in my 2012 blog event, A Month of Vertigo, with a video blog on the theme of obsession and has, since then, finished college (as class valedictorian) and started working for the DGA (Directors Guild). Though he missed out on getting a festival pass this year, he was intent on attending the Sunday morning screening of Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953) with a standby ticket. Ozu’s world cinema masterpiece was inspired by Make Way for Tomorrow (1937), which was being shown down the street as Brandon and I spoke.

Next, I crossed the lobby to Club TCM – my first foray into the Roosevelt’s fabled Blossom Room, where the first Academy Awards ceremony was held - to meet another friend.

1929 Academy Awards ceremony in the Blossom Room

 "Club TCM" event in the Blossom Room, April 11, 2014



Christian Esquevin’s website is Silver Screen Modes and he’s the author of Adrian: Silver Screen to Custom Label. We’ve been commenting on each other’s blogs for ages and finally conspired to meet, if only briefly, at Club TCM on Friday. He’d just seen Zulu (1964) and was about to go to the screening of Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). Christian had spent all of Thursday at FIDM (the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising) where he delivered his collection of original costume sketches that will be the focus of an exhibit set to open there in June. 

By the time Christian left for St. Louis, I’d decided to attend “A Conversation with William Friedkin” at Club TCM. Friedkin has always interested me. He'd been a wunderkind of the New Hollywood, directing two of its classics: The French Connection (1971) and The Exorcist (1973). During the late 1970s he was married to the great French actress, Jeanne Moreau but, by then, his career had begun to falter. Though he suffered serious health problems at one point, he never entirely stopped making movies and has been married to former Paramount CEO, Sherry Lansing, since 1991. Friedkin's most recent films are Bug (2006) with Ashley Judd and Killer Joe (2011) starring Matthew McConaughey. Eddie Muller, founder of the Film Noir Foundation, introduced and interviewed him and it was a spirited, often humorous, exchange that covered the major high and low points of the director's career. The articulate Mr. Friedkin, a great charmer, proved to have enough charisma, brash humor and intelligence to quite easily tuck just about any audience into his back pocket. By the end of the conversation I'd resolved to make a point of seeing his newly restored Sorcerer (1977) Saturday night at the Chinese Theatre.

Eddie Muller, left, and William Friedkin on stage at "Club TCM"
The Friedkin event had run later than scheduled because the Richard Dreyfuss interview before it had gone into overtime. Now it was the dinner hour...

Top and bottom: Musso & Frank's, then and now

Years ago I lived in Hollywood for a while, but it was during a time when the Walk of Fame area was neglected and seedy. Even so, because I was well aware of its history, I’d taken notice of Musso & Frank’s Grill on Hollywood Boulevard. Though I’d enjoyed a few lunches at the Brown Derby on Vine as well as a dinner or two at Perino’s, I’d never made my way to Musso & Frank’s. On Friday night, that would finally change. A friend and former colleague, who moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles some years ago, was meeting me there for dinner. She lives in the Los Feliz area and works at NBCUniversal but, like me, had yet to dine at the famous Hollywood haunt.

We decided to start with drinks at the bar in the newer (circa 1953) of two rooms that make up the restaurant. As we sipped cocktails and talked, I spotted a number of patrons wearing lanyards with TCM festival badges dangling from them. And as our conversation turned to Hollywood, old and new, visions of the grill’s illustrious guests of days gone by began to dance in my head…Chaplin, Fairbanks, Pickford, Valentino…Barrymore…Garbo…Rita Hayworth…Bogart with Bacall…Marilyn Monroe with Joe DiMaggio…Elizabeth Taylor…Steve McQueen. And the writers who came to town to write for the movies - Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Chandler, Dorothy Parker, Steinbeck…Vonnegut. They’d all spent time at Musso & Frank’s.

Frank Sinatra and Lauren Bacall at Musso & Frank's in 1957
The place was originally opened by partners Joseph Musso and Frank Toulet and called Frank’s Francois Café. Founded in 1919, the famed grill has witnessed the entire evolution of the movie business in Hollywood, from the silent era to talkies, from mid-century Technicolor/Cinemascope epics to today’s CGI extravaganzas.

The décor and ambience, like the red bolero-jacketed waiters, are distinctly Old Hollywood. The walls are trimmed and paneled in dark wood, the upholstery is red Naughahide and muted pastoral-themed scenes decorate the wallpaper. Most affecting of all, though, is the intimacy one feels with the Hollywood history that seems to saturate Musso & Frank’s. Oh yes, and the food is good, too.


...to be continued...
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A Tyrone Power Centennial

May 1, 2014, 12:00 am
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This month brings the 100th anniversary of the birth of legendary actor Tyrone Power, “The King of 20th Century Fox."  As part of a nationwide centennial celebration, The Northbrook Public Library in Northbrook, IL, welcomes actress Taryn Power-Greendeer on May 2nd at 2:00 p.m. in the Multi-Media Department.  The daughter of Tyrone Power and actress Linda Christian, Taryn was only 5 when her father died at the age of 44 in 1958.  She will talk about growing up as the daughter of a film idol and the process of learning how to separate the man from the myth.  A feature of her talk will be the fascinating search she and her older sister, Romina, undertook in an attempt to discover the real Tyrone Power.  A Limited First Edition of Searching for My Father, Tyrone Power by Romina Power, available only at centennial events, will be on sale at the event. 

Meanwhile, this afternoon, the Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge, IL, will celebrate Power's centenary with a screening of two of his great popular hits, In Old Chicago(1937) and Jesse James(1939). Copies of Romina Power's limited edition memoir will also be on sale at the theater.

On Monday, May 5, Power's birthday, Lady Eve's Reel Life and They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To will host a blogathon - Power-Mad in his honor. Check back then for links to posts by the dazzling roster of bloggers who will pay tribute to his films and his life.

On Thursday, May 8, Movie Memories will present a red carpet showing of Blood and Sand at the 20th Century Theater in Cincinnati, Ohio (Tyrone Power's birthplace) which was the first feature shown at the 20th Century during its grand opening in 1941. Power’s children (Romina, Taryn and Tyrone Power, Jr.) will host a private reception prior to the screening. During their visit to Cincinnati, the Power family will also tour the places where their father lived and attended school.

On Saturday, May 10, Movie Memories will present two of my personal favorites, The Black Swan(1942) and The Rains Came(1939) in a commemorative screening at the Lions Lincoln Theatre in Massillon, Ohio. All three of Power's children will appear at the event.

Coming later this year, and also presented by Movie Memories, on August 8, Tyrone Power will be honored as part of the annual "Jesse James Days" in Pineville, Missouri, where Jesse James was filmed.  

Jesse James (1939)
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