Wait, you LIKE that movie? But, Kate! It was made after 1970! Let me feel your forehead...

I know everyone around here is pretty obsessed with older films. But I'm not just pro-older films, I'm very anti-newer films. I usually get a very twisted, "you MUST be kidding me" look on my face when anyone, but anyone, asks me to go to see a new film in theaters. And no, renting it from Netflix won't mask the fact that it was made in 2004. It is still a new film, be it in a theater or at home. I'm prone to sulk in my bedroom when my family (who usually share my strict pre-1970 rule) cave in and rent something new. (Okay, I don't actually "sulk"... but I do make it pretty well known that I won't be around for two hours or so...)

So, yesterday I had to pick out a movie for our "dinner and a movie" Father's Day event. Looking through my DVDs and old VHS tapes I came across 'A Little Princess', a movie that was released in 1995, when I was 9 years old. It was one of those children's movies where your parents like it as much, if not more than you do (especially my dad, who asks to see it almost every year) Since my dad likes it so much, and the plot is perfect for Father's Day, I decided we would actually watch a "new" movie (albeit, 14 years old)

I loved it just as much as I did when I was a little girl. I actually cried twice! It was such a magical, beautiful movie, I completely forgot that it was post 1970, breaking my cardinal rule of movie watching. So this got me thinking... if I had to make a list of post 1970 films that are actually good, how long could I get it? Are there two? five? Maybe if I include Disney cartoons, I can get the list to 10. Well, I actually managed 12!! Yes, 12!! Quite a feat for someone who has probably only seen about 30!

1. A Little Princess (of course!)

2. The Way We Were (from my Robert Redford kick 2 years ago)

3. Beauty and the Beast (My favorite cartoon as a kid)

4. The Little Mermaid (My second favorite cartoon as a kid)

5. The Brave Little Toaster (I love Lampy!)

6. When Harry Met Sally (Maybe Rob Reiner is my favorite modern director....)

7. Out of Africa (also from the Robert Redford kick...)

8. Schindler's List (Watched it in film class, & it was really moving)

9. The Hot Rock (also from the Robert Redford kick...)

10. Ferngully (My third favorite cartoon as a kid)

11. Waking Ned Devine (love movies about old people)

12. On Golden Pond (who doesn't love Henry Fonda in this movie?)

So there it is, folks... all 12 "newer" films that I would be happy to watch more than once. Other than these, I'll stick with my pre-1970 rule! :)

What "newer" films make it on your list? Either list in comments or send me a link to your post! :D

You can read lists from the other bloggers who have "jumped on the bandwagon":

Millie at ClassicForever

Elizabeth at Oh by Jingo! Oh by Gee!

Sarah at Cinema Splendor
Matthew at Movietone News

(If I missed your post just let me know!)

Charles Boyer {Song of the Week} PART II

By now you already know how I feel about Mr. Charles Boyer. He's great, he's fantastic, best actor ever, love the way he sings, and a really nifty person too! If you haven't already read all of my gushy sentiments, you can click here to read my very first post about Charles Boyer (and my first ever post on this blog!) or you can click here to read what I had to say last Sunday in Charles Boyer's Song of the Week tribute Part I.

In Part I, I posted the 1930's song Tout la-bas, a French language version of "Where the Lighthouse Shines Across the Bay". This week I have Charles Boyer singing much later in his life. In the 1960's, Boyer's son Michael persuaded him to record a musical album, since he was so world renowned for that gorgeous voice. Lucky for us, he agreed to do the record, a beautiful tribute to love.

It was hard to pick just one song to include here, but I finally settled on "Once Upon a Time" a lovely song that has a storybook feel to it.

Listen to it

Buy it

To listen to previous songs of the week, click here.

Fredric March

I wrote a nifty little piece on Fredric March for Raquelle's Guest Blogger Month on Out of the Past. I really do hope you'll check it out, and then stay over there for a while -- since Out of the Past just turned TWO years old this month (!!!) there is plenty of outstanding material to keep your eyes glued to the computer for the rest of the weekend :)

*just remember to stop reading for at least ten minutes so you can call up your dad and wish him a Happy Father's Day!*

Now please go read my post.... HERE!

Ruthelma Stevens, revisited.. again

I don't know if anyone else ever does this too (I'm hoping you do so I don't feel like such a silly idiot!) but I was typing in search terms on google to see where my blog showed up (I feel so foolish admitting this) and when I typed in "Ruthelma Stevens" I came across a TCM Movie Morlocks blog post from last October about The Circus Queen Murder. (By the way, my post was on page 2 in case anyone was curious...)

The TCM blogger moirafinnie decided to highlight a different forgotten star from the film, Dwight Frye (the Circus Queen's husband, and fellow trapeze artist extraordinaire) They only give a small, passing mention to Ruthlema (and a backhanded compliment, "a character played with some considerable warmth by forgotten starlet Ruthlema Stevens") but the main reason I was so excited to find this post is the lobby card they have pictured to accompany it. It has a picture of Ruthelma on it!

I was shocked to find this, especially because it seems like this poster, just like the other one I featured, doesn't have her name on it, despite the fact that she is the female lead! Also, as I mentioned in my first post about Ruthelma, I couldn't find one single picture of her on the internet when I was researching my post. I was just so giddy to find this that I had to share it with you!

Helen Mack {Starlet Dreams}

You may not be familiar with the name Helen Mack. And her portrait might not immediately ring a bell in your mind either. But I'm positive that if you are a fan of late 30's screwball comedies, two simple words will immediately make you realize who she is. Mollie Malloy.

In His Girl Friday, Helen Mack had the unbelievably powerful role of Mollie Malloy, the girl whose life was doomed simply because she was nice to a poor helpless stranger. In a film with that starred Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, and peppered with such great supporting stars as Ralph Bellamy, John Qualen, Regis Toomey, Gene Lockhart and Cliff Edwards, the stand-out performance is given by Helen Mack. She barely has even ten minutes total on screen and yet her short performance is imprinted on your brain forever.

Except for a handful of starring roles in minor films, it seems like making the most out of a mere ten minutes screen time was Helen Mack's specialty. After seeing her recently in the 1933 film, Sweepings, I just had to do this post. Again, she is given a scant 5-10 minutes on screen, and yet her performance is brilliant. I really wish her character had been built up in this film-- she would have given a nice splash of spunk and energy to a film that was starting to drag by the time she made her entrance.

Though I only really discovered the name behind the talent recently, I've always been taken aback by her performance in His Girl Friday, stunned that this powerhouse performance didn't kick-start a more luminous career. She had something that many major stars didn't have: screen presence. Her words come flying out of her mouth as if there was no script behind them. Her emotions are real and raw, and in a film that, at its core, is a romantic screwball comedy, Helen Mack gives an Oscar-worthy performance that temporarily knocks you off the edge of your seat.

Helen started acting in films when she was a little girl, (10 years old according to imdb) and her filmography stops in 1945... I'm not an authority on Helen Mack's life, so I don't know if she made a conscious decision to leave film and raise a family, or if playing characters named "secretary" wasn't exactly the career she had in mind. Whatever the reason, Helen only made five films after that performance in His Girl Friday. And I think that's a darn shame.

Charles Boyer {Song of the Week} PART I

I love Charles Boyer.

I always go back and forth between Charles and Ronald Colman -- the two are constantly fighting an epic battle for #1 actor in my brain. In fact, my very first post on this blog was dedicated to Charles Boyer! There's just something about him that grips me. His acting, his romantic persona, his ability to transition from lovable playboy (Love Affair) to deranged murderer (Gaslight), or from tropical moodiness (Algiers) to lighthearted comedy (Tovarich), or maybe it's just... the voice.

You know he never actually said "Come wiz me to za Cazbah" -- but that sentence epitomizes his style. Even if he never uttered it, you can still hear him saying it in your mind with that French accent, and deep, smooth tone.

His voice was actually meant for talking, not singing. You can tell in the few recordings he made that his range is limited -- but as I've said in previous posts about actors who sing (especially Walter Huston) sometimes the phrasing and the emotion behind the words is more important than how they sound. Case in point: Charles Boyer. He has a talk-sing style, but at times you can hear him literally pushing the words out of his lungs- you can just hear emotion in his voice. He also has a technique of letting the last word linger a little - not in a booming Sinatra style, where one syllable can be stretched out for 10 bars, but like a wispy, romantic longing, his voice just peters out. It's so elegant and charming.

This is PART I of a two-week Charles Boyer song of the week series. In this post, I'm going to give you Tout la-bas, a French song that Charles recorded (the English title of the song is "Where the Lighthouse Shines Across the Bay") I'm guessing in the early 1930's. My liner notes don't give an actual date, they only say that it was recorded when his "career was only just starting." The song has a really haunting quality to it -- the chorus of male singers reminds me of poor Frenchmen in black and white striped shirts with bandanas tied around their necks singing gracefully in a small Parisian alley outside a tiny cafe... I can just picture it in my mind while they sing...

These are the English lyrics:

Where the lighthouse shines across the bay,
There's a cottage kissed by fume and spray,
Cheerful logs to warm the winter day are blazing.
List'ning to the breakers on the shore,
From a tiny cottage thatched with straw,
Stands a fair-haired lassie at the door star gazing.
Watching the dark clouds, dreading the gale,
Counting the days since her lover set sail.
Where the lighthouse shines across the bay,
Seagulls on the shore have heard her say:
"Come home, my love, come home, dear love, come home."

A little fun fact: Conrad Veidt (a favorite actor of mine-- have you seen him in The Man Who Laughs?) sang the English version and it's available on YouTube here!

Tout la-bas

by Charles Boyer

Listen to it

Buy it

Next week, I'll have two songs that Charles Boyer recorded in the 1960's for his album "Where Does Love Go?" -- I have the album & the cd, and I'm very excited about sharing two of the songs with you! In the mean time, I hope you'll enjoy Tout la-bas!

Click here to hear songs from weeks gone by...

PS. Happy Anniversary to Raquelle at Out of the Past, who is celebrating her TWO YEAR blogging anniversary!! Hers is one of my favorite classic film blogs-- if you haven't discovered her yet, please go take a look now, where she has a post up with a collection of links to her own personal favorite posts of the last two years!

The Man Who Came to Dinner

Things you didn't know about me #239: I am obsessed with The Man Who Came to Dinner.

Although my top five list of films usually includes about 20, this is one movie that would definitely be in the top five if I actually had to narrow the list to five. It is quite possibly the funniest film ever made.. If film weren't an inanimate object, it would actually kill to have the stars of this film imprint its celluloid. Bette Davis. Ann Sheridan. Monty Wooley. Grant Mitchell. Billie Burke. Reginald Gardiner. Jimmy Durante.

Believe it or not, though, the stars are only about 45% of the reason I am in love with this film. The other 55%? THE SCRIPT. This is the most hilarious, bitingly witty, fast paced spectacular script I've ever heard. The script IS the star.

As I was watching the movie for the gazillionth time two days ago, an idea struck me. (cue lightbulb over my head) -- Instead of just doing portraits of the people stars, why not do portraits of the words?! I am a big fan of typographical art, but nobody in this genre seems to have ever singled out scripts from classic Hollywood before.

So for starters, I picked out three of my favorite quotes from The Man Who Came to Dinner. One of my other favorites would make for a very nasty birthday card:

"My great aunt Jennifer ate a whole box of candy every day of her life. She lived to be 102, and when she'd been dead three days she looked better than you do now!"... Happy Birthday!

:D See, morbidly funny, right?

Anyway, the three I picked for illustration aren't quite as morbid, but they are witty, unabashedly egotistical and quite hilarious. PLEASE in the comments section, I'd love suggestions for quotes to illustrate! I had a blast doing these, and I'd love to do more!

-Reginald Gardiner as Beverly Carlton

-The inimitable Monty Wooley as Sheridan Whiteside

-Jimmy Durante as Banjo

James Cagney {Song of the Week}

Unless you've been living under a rock your whole life, you've probably seen Yankee Doodle Dandy, yes? Then you've probably already heard my song of the week.

Yankee Doodle Dandy is one of my favorite movies. James Cagney is the definition of perfection in this film. Seriously, if you look in the dictionary, under the word "perfection" they simply have a picture of Cagney in this film. He's THAT good. I've raved about this film & Cagney's character before, but last time I didn't follow it up with an mp3 clip of Cagney singing. Sure, I've told you he was a triple threat, but have I proven it? No.

So here it is, James Cagney singing a sweet song written by George M. Cohan, "Mary is a Grand Old Name."

Listen to it

Buy it

To listen to previous songs of the week, click here.

Marilyn Monroe

As you may have already heard, some never before published photos of Marilyn Monroe were released the other day from Life.com.

I've been doing classic movie paintings and drawings for almost half a year now, and I've never painted or drawn Marilyn. For some reason, I've been reluctant to depict the huge icons (except Audrey Hepburn, just because.) and kept putting it off. But when I saw these pictures, I just had to draw one of them.

The photos were taken in between her roles in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve, just before she shot to super-stardom. She looks so fresh, young and happy in these pictures.

It's a common misperception that because Marilyn Monroe was beautiful, she couldn't act. But I actually think she was one of the best comediennes of the 1950's. Since I rely heavily on TCM for my classic movie supply, I don't get to see Marilyn Monroe's films very often. I have Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch and How to Marry a Millionaire on VHS but I don't watch them very often because, well, they're on VHS.

For a while, TCM was showing All About Eve almost every week (I'm guessing this was because they had temporary rights to show it, as it isn't scheduled anymore-- and by the way, when you search for "All About Eve" on TCM the ONLY result is "All About Steve" (2007)... what?! I had to search for Bette Davis, and then click on All About Eve through her filmography... odd!) anyway, when they were showing All About Eve every waking minute, I kept watching it over and over again, and after many viewings I realized that Marilyn Monroe may be the best part of the film. I'm surprised that it took two whole years for studios to give her a starring role after she did such a great job in this tiny role:

See what I mean? That part about yelling "Butler" just cracks me up :)

Thomas Mitchell

by Richard Hourula

of Riku Writes

Guest Blogger

Imagine Thomas Mitchell, right now, in blissful residence in Hollywood heaven. Someone asks him, so how was 1939 for you, Thomas?

“Well,” he’d reply while rubbing his chin, eyes glazed a bit. “Let me see, I believe that was the year when I was a quite a few fine films.”

No foolin. Now hopefully Mr. Mitchell wont be too modest, I mean all he’d have to do is name those films and anybody would be impressed: Stagecoach, Only Angels Have Wings, Gone With the Wind, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. In one year. He had a great career that year.

He won a most deserved Best Supporting Actor for Stagecoach and could have garnered another nomination or two, at least.

Of course there was more to come. Perhaps his signature role was as Uncle Billy in It’s A Wonderful Life (1946). He was an at times bumbling, fumbling old fool but always a lovable one. Whether he’d a few too many or forgot what the strings on his finger were there to help him not forget, he was the quintessential dear old Uncle.

As Doc Boone in his Oscar winning performance, Mitchell was a disgraced doctor who’d been run out of town. He took advantage of a meek whiskey salesman (played, fittingly by Donald Meek) and kept hoodwinking the poor sap out of his wares. But when it came to delivering a baby he was equal to the task. When Injuns attacked his hand was steady on a pistol. Even at his worst Doc Boone, as played by Mitchell, was an amiable sort.

Indeed it seems Mitchell couldn’t have played disagreeable if he tried. First there was that face. Round and friendly with a twinkle in the eyes. Then his voice, which had its own warm timbre. Mitchell's persona was a kind of grizzled cuddliness. No wonder he played doctors so often.

Yeah but the man could act. Whether as Scarlett O'Hara's poppa, or a pirate in The Black Swan (1942) or the mayor in High Noon (1952), Mitchell took on a character and never slipped into a caricature of himself.

As Diz Moore, the cynical hard drinking reporter in Mr. Smith, he gave a nuanced performance as a man whose hard heart melts even as he loses the woman he loves.

There's a film I very much admire called The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941). Mitchell started filming in the role of Webster only to suffer a broken leg. As good as Edward Arnold was filling in, I’m sure I’m not the only film buff who would love to have seen Mitchell in the role. Maybe he’s gotten the casting call in Hollywood Heaven.

Like many actors of his time, Mitchell made the switch to TV in the 1950’s, making only a handful of films during the last ten years of his life. Hollywood’s loss was TV’s gain.

Somehow to call Mitchell a character actor doesn't seem right. (Anyway, since all actors play characters, aren’t they all character actors?). It suggests an actor in a series of small parts in which he plays variations on the same guy (see Franklin Pangborn). Nothing wrong with it but it’s not Mitchell. He may have never been a leading man but he was too integral to too many films doing too much with a role to be thus pigeon holed. He played a lot of drunks, a lot of doctors and a lot of rascals, but fit them to the film he was in.

Yeah, Mitchell is doubtless glad to discuss his amazing 1939. But truth to tell, that was just one year in a most distinguished career.