This year, some might wish more longingly for one fewer excursion in search of something perfect for that special someone or for reasons to be rushing around. Whenever the charged emotions and high expectations overwhelm me at the holidays, I find myself looking for some forms of escape, which, of course, may sometimes be a [...]

Van Johnson had, according to my mother’s sarcastic remark whenever she saw him in an old movie, “a face like a bowl of corn flakes”, meaning wholesome and familiar, if not necessarily something you’d want as daily fare.
Despite this early attempt to influence my taste for what Mom undoubtedly believed was “the better”, I liked [...]

Last Saturday, December 6th, marked the 108th anniversary of the birth of Agnes Moorehead.

While I enjoyed the sight of Moorehead’s acerbic, self-centered country club divorcée as she preened and passed judgment last night during TCM’s broadcast of David O. Selznick’s powerfully bathetic Since You Went Away (1945), it struck me for the hundredth time that the presence of Agnes Moorehead in many classic (and not so classic) films was often what gave a movie a spine. Her characters, whether false or true, invariably made a vivid impression and deserve to be spotlighted around her birthday.

In the last week, TCM has given us a chance to see this actress pulling out many of the stops in some of those exceptional roles, with airings earlier this month of Citizen Kane (1941), with her five minute, finely etched debut performance in film as Charles Foster Kane’s mother, and in what author Charles Tranberg calls “a mangled masterpiece”, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), which gave the character actress her great role as the eternally frustrated Fanny Minafer. Not to be forgotten is her cranky hypochondriac in Pollyanna (1960), which Suzidoll celebrated here last week. In a rare broadcast just yesterday, the actress appeared as an elegant former prima ballerina (seen in technicolor glory on the left) trying to protect Moira Shearer in The Story of Three Loves (1953). The distinctive actress proved her versatility throughout her career, arranging her aquiline features accordingly to convey a believable briskness, sometimes comforting, sometimes disapproving, but usually a sensible presence in many films that have etched themselves on our collective memory.

In considering the darker aspects of Disney movies with my fellow Morlocks this week, I’ve been mulling over my own shifting emotions about these undeniably compelling movies.
One of the joys, and occasionally jarring aspects of relishing Walt Disney movies is that your perception of them can change–sometimes drastically–when seeing these films over a lifetime. As [...]

As usual, I come to praise all things passé today.
Have you made your last run to the store for that much needed carrot, bottle of bubbly, or pearl onion? If not, maybe, like me, you’ll find that mulling over what’s really needed makes you believe you’ll get by without it by now–especially since the rising [...]

One day last week I found myself viewing the dvd of a little known film version of Herman Melville’s Billy Budd (1962).  Coincidentally, that Tuesday, November 11th was Veteran’s Day. It also happened to be the 99th anniversary of the birth date of a superb and too little appreciated actor, Robert Ryan. Mr. Ryan appears [...]

Please note: To review this two part blog from the beginning, you can start here.
By the end of 1946, Dorothy McGuire found herself a successful screen actress. She had played two benighted servants who overcame their problems, a child-wife, and another, more knowing wife with a bitter heart, who was also an inarticulate mother [...]

A friend once pointed out to me that in 2002, the name of Dorothy McGuire was not mentioned once during the Academy Awards show that followed her death by six months. It would have been a graceful coda to the public life of this former Academy Award nominee, but, given the memorable, soft-spoken manner [...]

In my more arrogant moments, I cling to the notion that, like my childhood attachment to comic books as a secret vice, any focus I might have had as a child on monster movies was a transitory thing. Just as I sometimes wish that I still had that secret stash of those now priceless copies [...]