Sure, I admit it’s only 77 short minutes long, and maybe feels more like an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, but in terms of sheer creepy atmosphere played for all it’s worth by two outstanding performers, RKO’s 1952 low-budget thriller Beware, My Lovely delivers.  The intelligent and talented Ida Lupino stars as Helen Gordon, a widow [...]

We had some fun last time looking at some 1950s -era TV Guide magazines featuring movie stars on the boob tube, and there are plenty more.  First, we need to acknowledge that TV Guide today is not the same as it was years ago; now it’s a mere tabloid-ish facsimile of its former self.  Granted [...]

Back in the day when Movie Stars were really MOVIE STARS, taking that step into television was a shocking move.  Considering how much opposition the movie studios had put up against the arrival of TV as a rival to their lock on audience attention, it’s perhaps downright courageous how many stars eventually embraced TV.  (Not to mention [...]

One of the most fascinating marathon-ish experiences I ever had at a movie theatre — other than the Planet of the Apes quintet screening I attended a loooooong time ago — would be the opportunity to see all five of artist Matthew Barney’s incredible Cremaster movies, over a period of a few days.  (I’ve just searched and found [...]

Who might have believed that one of the more unusual bits of movie star ephemera is making a vibrant comeback?  Movie star paper dolls, once a popular marketing tool (only they called it publicity back then) designed to satisfy the audience’s desire to get close to their favorite performers, were big sellers to little and not-so-little [...]

Okay, so I’m again officially the last to know something.  This marvelous young actor/comedian named Andrew Goldenberg, a.k.a. Goldentusk, has been writing, producing, and starring in a series of imaginative original videos, taking movie theme songs and putting his own words to them, and playing all the characters.  Maybe you’ve seen them — I hadn’t until yesterday, [...]

What becomes of a screen siren/Academy Award winner afterwards…after she’s not such a siren anymore, and maybe she’s gotten a reputation as a little bit difficult to work with?  Lucky for talented and tempestous Gloria Grahame there was television, and the medium was delighted to have a genuine Oscar-calibre actress available.  When Grahame started to [...]

Today would have been the 98th birthday of beloved actress and comedienne Lucille Ball, who died a little over twenty years ago.  Of course it’s almost impossible to believe that we no longer have Lucy with us, because she’s around us every day, as solid a piece of pop culture as there is anywhere.  Even [...]

Who can resist the exotic notion of the magical genie, emerging smokily from its pent-up quarters (probably a magic lamp) to grudgingly do one’s bidding?  Though Disney’s genie from the animated Aladdin seems to have superceded many other cinematic genies in the minds of the younger generation at least, it’s the old-fashioned kind that appeal to me.  [...]