mortiz002

When Wars Collide: Tomorrow Is Forever (1946) Sometimes in youth I could at least emulate a grown-up by selecting other than monsters and spacemen for a late show. Tomorrow Is Forever had a premise that really intrigued me, a man apparently lost in the war whose wife remarries and lives content until damaged husband #1 returns twenty years later, his identity concealed to her and everyone. Principals are Claudette Colbert, Orson Welles, and George Brent (whom she weds after apparent war loss of Welles). Colbert had been eased into mother parts with Since You Went Away , was now a well-preserved forty-three. She was up on Orson by twelve years, but he could disguise like something out of a mummy case if need be, and so bridges age gulf nimbly. Welles was wanted as an actor more than director, maybe even a romantic lead provided he c ould push far enough back from dining tables. Who'd argue love skills with a man married to Rita Hayworth? Tomorrow Is Forever has a flashback with a

Undercover Robert Taylor Says, This Is My Affair (1937) Naval officer Robert Taylor goes on secret assignment for President McKinley to flush out bank-robbing Victor McLaglen and Brian Donlevy. 20th Fox was lured by Gay 90's theme like bugs to a light bulb, Affair pursuing trend of The Bowery and ones that would follow right into the 50's when past century dwellers would disappear sure as nickel beer and horse carriages these pics celebrated. What was Betty Grable's career but ongoing evocation of this? Zanuck, or maybe Joseph Schenck, must have been raised by barber shop quartets. This time at least, action is played more for keeps, stakes high for Taylor gone undercover and then having rugs pulled when McKinley is assassinated and there's no one to clear him of complicity in bank jobs. This Is My Affair was bedecked in gloss, a bid to match Metro for such val ues, that a greater urgency as Taylor was borrowed from Leo for the occasion. Much of selling honed on lea

Two Live Happier Than One in Ex-Lady (1933) Another early Bette Davis that she would disparage. BD told Whitney Stine in the 70's that "It was a disaster," but this was when seeing Ex-Lady was challenge of its own, TV having shunned it, with revival housing not to be bothered. Precode as precious metal thanks to TCM and Warner Archive puts Ex-Lady before us for worthy thing it is, a better-than-many programmer you can't blame old-age Davis for overlooking. WB designed Ex-Lady to sizzle, ads warning it was not for children, a tag you could hang on much of movies that came out in 1933. Whole of 67 minute's burning issue is whether BD and paramour Gene Raymond should marry or simply live together, Ex-Lady proposing for at least most of run time that latter card may be the better one to play. This flew full in face of prevailing morality as guarded by opinion-makers and local censorship that could and did freeze Ex-Lady  out of theatres. There was calculated risk

Sunset At Sundown Westerns were once a gateway for film collectors. It was the genre that started them down life's journey of enthusiasm. These were people I knew and learned from during 70's chase after 16/35mm and whatever memorabilia old-timers kept since a Front Row era when the y were cowboy kids and I wasn't yet born. Life's moral compass spun on what Buck Jones or Fred Thomso n or Hopalong Cassidy taught. Each of elder fans, in fact all of them I met, felt our culture took a plunge once westerns and serials ended and left youth to mercy of changed-for-worse times. M oon Mullins, of whom I've spoke before , lived in the town where I went to college. He had a theatre in back of his house, a dedica ted frame building, with booth projection and a pulley system to work the curtains. Moon with his "Camera Club" regaled a crowd of at le ast forty men (some with wives in tolerant accompa ny) on weekly basis. I was always the youngest person there. We saw n

Greetings Gate --- Here Comes Colonna! The Chicago Theatre had variously 3,500 to 3,880 seats. It is still there and a supreme monument for picture houses the way they used to be. The place would open early (9 AM as here) and run late into the night. Bills were loaded with live entertainers to which a movie was often incidental. Most of patronage went to see the headliner and got impatient with screen fare they'd have to sit through two or three times in order to see the live entertainment over and over. Some would plant themselves in a seat and stay all day. Balaban and Katz owned the Chicago and other "Wonder Theatres." Both partners ended up running film companies, most notably Barney Balaban as longtime Paramount chief. Nobody knew the business like former exhibitors. The program here is Jerry Colonna ("You Crazy Or Sumpin?"), stooge-run-wild for Bob Hop e and 40's definition of "zany." Colonna introduced more catchphrases into culture than we&

Reagan Bows Out Of Starring Features with Hellcats Of The Navy (1957) Recalled, if at all, as Ronald Reagan's only feature appearance with w ife Nancy. It looks like a war movie made during the war itself that got dredged up to release in 1957, as if so meone had misplaced it for fifteen years. Cheapness is byword, this a second of properties Charles Schneer developed for Columbia release under his "Morningside" banner. Schneer had done sci-fi/fantasy ( The Giant Ymir , which became Twenty Million Miles To Earth ), but didn't want himself typed by the genre. Product needed to be cheap so as to play double features, often at lower position. You couldn't spend a million dollars and expect to get it back booking flat. Hellcats Of The Navy had every cooperation from that branch; Pacific Fleet Commander Chester Nimitz even did a prologue and participated by way of actor portrayal. A bigger star than Reagan and expanded budget might have gotten a good picture out of th

Greenbriar Posting #2000: David Copperfield (1935) Is Evergreen For Metro MGM had a “World Heritage” series they launched in 1962. Designed as outreach to schools and sop to group attendance, the oldies group generally booked on off days (Tuesday was choice for venues near me), and would play matinee-only at many sites. Cousin to the Heritage lot was “Enrichment” titles, which were literary-based and ripe for higher-brow approval. All of selections had played TV or were about to, but freshness wasn’t the point of Heritage and Enrichment, content based after all on history, or musty book s ordinarily the bane of youth bundled aboard buses to see impossi bly old movies adapted from even older text. MGM kept prints at their Charlotte exchange for as long as there was a Charlotte exchange. A friend who worked there told me that upstairs storage fair ly groaned with 35mm and tons of accessories for Heritage/Enrichment, plu s long-beard musicals brought back to pleasure middle-agers. Sad