I don’t know the woman’s name but I’ve kept her close to my heart for over 30 years.  The one and only time I saw her was when my family went, as a unit (rare, so very rare) to see STAR WARS back in 1977.  I was 16 years old, an untested youth possessing man-sized hormones and lonely for love.  I needed a woman… and I found her in a galaxy far, far away.  READ MORE

“A life of don’t-care-a-damn in a boarding house is what I have asked for in many a secret prayer.”
- Mark Twain

Last night, as Joshua Logan’s film of Picnic (1955) unraveled the rather desperate lives conceived by playwright William Inge in the Kansas of his imagination on TCM, I found myself once more hoping that maybe this time, Arthur O’Connell would hop that freight with William Holden at the end of the movie. While the aging Holden and Kim Novak made a moving if unlikely couple, it was Arthur and SOTM Rosalind Russell’s desperate date with destiny that always gives me chills. As Ms. Russell’s schoolteacher character, who goes around defensively introducing herself as an old maid, experiences a booze-fired catharsis on Labor Day, she steamrolls poor Arthur, her indecisive, hapless suitor into marriage before the guy knows what hit him.

This role is well and vigorously played by Russell, (who should have allowed her name to be submitted for consideration as a Supporting Actress in the Oscar free for all for this film).

Still, I kept wondering, do they really have much more of a chance forhappiness than Holden and Novak?

I have my doubts. Even if the pair are older and seemingly more settled, as Russell reflects at one point, she does “get crazier all the time” and O’Connell seems to have a spine of a wet noodle, and neither of those personality traits is likely to be a boon to marital bliss. Reflecting on Inge’s annoyingly real characters, however, I sometimes wonder if the somewhat over-the-top high school teacher Roz played just wanted to get out of that boarding house she perched in for so long with the Owens family, consisting of abandoned Mom Betty Field and her daughters Kim “What good is it only being pretty?” Novak and college-bound “ugly duckling” Susan Strasberg. Filmed in real homes in Nickerson, Kansas, the modest house, which reflects the genteel poverty of a family that is compelled by economic circumstances to rent a room seems to be a hotbed of female frustration, most loudly, that of Russell’s increasingly ragged Miss Sydney. (Come to think of it, maybe Betty Field, Kim Novak, Susan Strasberg and Rosalind Russell should’ve been the ones hopping that freight out of their small town. On second thought, perhaps they should ride the rails separately. All of them in one box car together might not hold that much estrogen comfortably). Though I am, as usual, being facetious, I must admit that movies that explore the psycho-social petri dish of the long gone institution of boarding houses do interest me.

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Chances are if you’re familiar with the name Helen Chandler it’s due to her appearance in Tod Browning’s DRACULA (1931), as imperilled heroine Mina Harker.  Chandler’s career got a big boost from the film and she was all over the posters, alongside star Bela Lugosi, who stared thirstily at her jugular vein.  Chandler is one of Hollywood’s great tragedies, a beautiful and promising actress who seemingly threw it all away and died in poverty and despair.  “I get very aloof and lost in a dream sometimes, while the world goes by outside,” Chandler once said.  “Everything is going so calm and sweet. Then, without warning, I’m in a jam.” READ MORE

Poster for Film

Most people recognize Peter Bogdanovich as the director behind The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon, and What’s Up Doc? and as the host of TCM’s “The Essentials” a couple of years ago. Those who have a good memory for the salacious might recall that Bogdanovich was involved in a scandal some 20 years ago in which actress Dorothy Stratten was brutally murdered by her estranged husband. Bogdanovich and Stratten were an item at the time, and her husband was enraged that he could not win back the affections of the former Playboy model. Some time after the murder, Bogdanovich married Stratten’s younger sister, Louise. READ MORE

And Stereophonic Sound….The Way It Was Meant To Be Seen! This was originally how Logan wanted to release his 1961 film adaptation of Marcel Pagnol’s famous trilogy which included Marius, Fanny and César. Luckily, someone pointed out to him the humorous allusion he was making unintentionally and his movie appeared on marquees as simply FANNY. It might have sold more tickets if he’d called it Leslie Caron’s FANNY but at least in France there was nothing funny about the name. It was in their cultural DNA and was a name with a beloved literary pedigree that went all the way back to 1929 when Pagnol first premiered his play Marius which introduced his colorful cast of characters from the Marseilles waterfront. READ MORE

I live in Hollywood… and this town is a movie town.  You knew that.  Movies come from Hollywood, so it’s no surprise the whole sprawling megalopolis has movies on the brain.  Given the way that movies have wiggled their way into almost every waking moment in the life of an Angeleno, it’s remarkable there aren’t more traffic accidents. READ MORE

In preparation for my July 4th and 5th backyard screening of Apocalypse Now Redux on, (cough) 16mm, I decided to pick up and read The Apocalypse Now Book by Peter Cowie. I’ve already seen the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Fimmakers’ Apocalypse (1991), so I thought I’d freshen up for the film using a different source. Cowie’s book came out in 2000, and includes “exclusive detailed descriptions of material restored by Coppola for Apocalypse Now Redux (2001).” READ MORE

It occurred to me recently that some jobs are woefully under-represented in movies. As you can see below, this unscientific pie chart that sprang from my brow is meant to represent how the world of work seems to break down in classic movies, at least to me. I suspect that many of us–at least in classic movie terms, might fall into that netherworld of 2%, marked “Other.”