Well, we’re in the final week of TCM’s Summer Under The Stars (SUTS), the channel’s annual tribute to one star per day for the month of August. I’ve still got a little room on the DVR. Check out these last few days of picks! As always, all times are Eastern. Week 01 picks are here. Week 02 picks are here. Week 03 picks are here. Week 04 picks are here.
Continue reading “Turner Classic Movies Summer Under The Stars 2022 — Week 05 Picks”Tag: 1940s
Turner Classic Movies Summer Under The Stars 2022 — Week 04 Picks
We’re now coming into the stretch of TCM’s Summer Under The Stars (SUTS), the channel’s annual tribute to one star per day for the month of August. I’ve watched a lot of new-to-me films, some great, some not-so-great. Emphasis for these picks is on films I haven’t seen yet and those increasingly rare rarities. Fun fact: I got hooked on TCM for good on Jean Gabin Day during the 2011 SUTS, so in a roundabout way, SUTS led to TCM Party. Picks for each day after the jump. As always, all times are Eastern.
Continue reading “Turner Classic Movies Summer Under The Stars 2022 — Week 04 Picks”Turner Classic Movies Summer Under The Stars 2022 — Week 03 Picks
Here is a list of what I’ll be watching and/or DVRing during Week 03 of TCM’s Summer Under The Stars (SUTS), the channel’s annual tribute to one star per day for the month of August. Emphasis is on films I haven’t seen yet and those increasingly rare rarities. Fun fact: I got hooked on TCM for good on Jean Gabin Day during the 2011 SUTS, so in a roundabout way, SUTS led to TCM Party. Picks for each day after the jump. As always, all times are Eastern.
This week is gonna kinda sorta be super random because I’m running late (it’s Tuesday as I write this) and I’m not crazy for anyone this week other than Joan Crawford and Toshiro Mifune, and many of these films play on TCM quite often. So I’ll really be looking for the odd and the rare.
Continue reading “Turner Classic Movies Summer Under The Stars 2022 — Week 03 Picks”Turner Classic Movies Summer Under The Stars 2022 — Week 02 Picks
Here is a list of what I’ll be watching and/or DVRing during Week 02 of TCM’s Summer Under The Stars (SUTS), the channel’s annual tribute to one star per day for the month of August. Emphasis is on films I haven’t seen yet and those increasingly rare rarities. Fun fact: I got hooked on TCM for good on Jean Gabin Day during the 2011 SUTS, so in a roundabout way, SUTS led to TCM Party. Picks for each day after the jump. As always, all times are Eastern.
Continue reading “Turner Classic Movies Summer Under The Stars 2022 — Week 02 Picks”Turner Classic Movies Summer Under The Stars 2022 — Week 01 Picks
Here is a list of what I’ll be watching and/or DVRing during TCM’s Summer Under The Stars (SUTS), the channel’s annual tribute to one star per day for the month of August. Emphasis is on films I haven’t seen yet and those increasingly rare rarities. Fun fact: I got hooked on TCM for good on Jean Gabin Day during the 2011 SUTS, so in a roundabout way, SUTS led to TCM Party. Picks for each day after the jump. As always, all times are Eastern.
Continue reading “Turner Classic Movies Summer Under The Stars 2022 — Week 01 Picks”What A Character! The cast of LURED (1947)
I was a late bloomer with Lured. I didn’t see Douglas Sirk’s remake of the 1939 French film Pieges until the mid-teens of the present century. This comedy/drama/film noir is a bit complicated, and I don’t want to reveal too much for those who haven’t seen the film. It’s so much fun, you deserve to see it for yourself. But here goes: Never-lovelier Lucille Ball portrays Sandra Carpenter, an American showgirl stranded in London. She’s working as a taxi dancer when her friend and co-worker Lucy (Tanis Chandler) disappears, probably the latest victim of the “Poet Killer,” a shadowy murderer who advertises for his prey in the personals section of the newspaper and taunts the police by sending them love poems in the mail. When Sandra goes to Scotland Yard to try and find Lucy, she is recruited by Inspector Harley Temple (Charles Coburn) to go undercover for the Yard. She will be essentially acting as bait for the killer, answering any and all personal ads that look sketchy enough to be leads. The first seeks a dress model. She goes to the studio of Charles van Druten (Boris Karloff), a former fashion designer, who is certainly unhinged. Is he the Poet Killer?
Meanwhile, Sandra had been trying to audition for a better dancing gig, in a new show with real producers, Robert Fleming (George Sanders) and Julian Wilde (Cedric Hardwicke). Long story short, while answering another personal ad, Sandra encounters “unmitigated cad” Fleming, and sparks fly. She’s on duty at the time, but he keeps turning up in the most unlikely places as she pursues the investigation. Hmm…
Continue reading “What A Character! The cast of LURED (1947)”Lionel Atwill’s Double Life
Lionel Atwill, a fixture of action and horror films throughout the 1930s and 1940s, is a familiar face whose background was unknown to me, so I figured he’d be great to write about for the 7th Annual What A Character! Blogathon. To be honest, there’s a lot more story here than I expected.
Review: Hank and Jim and the 50-Year Friendship PLUS Giveaway
As a classic movie devotee, I’ve always wondered how two so different people as Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart — somehow he is never “James” — could maintain such a lasting and close friendship as theirs apparently was. I’d heard about the model airplane they built together, and the double dates. Yet Fonda was a New Deal Democrat who was married 5 times, had issues with his kids, and seemed to keep to himself; Stewart was a conservative Republican, got married once for life, had a decent relationship with his kids, and seemed to know everybody. The new double biography Hank and Jim: The Fifty-Year Friendship of Henry Fonda and James Stewart, by Scott Eyman, acclaimed author of John Wayne: The Life and Legend, reconciles this conundrum, and in the process reveals that these two actors were more alike than I knew. Giveaway winner announced after the jump.
Continue reading “Review: Hank and Jim and the 50-Year Friendship PLUS Giveaway”
What A Character! “Crazy Russian” Leonid Kinskey
Just like everybody goes to Rick’s, everybody knows Leonid Kinskey, whether they know his name or not. Kinskey portrays Sascha, the voluble Russian bartender, in that classic of all classics, Casablanca (1943). We meet him quite early on, when Yvonne, Rick’s latest ex-girlfriend, has had a little too much to drink and needs to be escorted home. But as I learned, there’s more to Kinskey than Sascha. Not that I won’t bask in the glory that is Casablanca first…
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I Love Lucy…especially in LURED
As #TCMParty people and/or readers of this blog may or may not know, I’m obsessed with the 1947 mystery-drama Lured. Sure, the presence of one of my favorite velvet-voiced British thespians, George Sanders, has a lot to do with it. But its major charm is Lucille Ball’s fine performance in the lead role, which, while allowing flickers of her comedic genius to show through, always makes me wish she’d done more dramatic roles.
Paula's Cinema Club 