Have you a favorite cab driver from classic movies?

Is he (or she) loud, pushy and aggressively seeking a faster route and big tip–maybe a Alan Hale, Sr. or Nat Pendleton type, quick with his mouth and his fists when needed? Or is the celluloid cabbie you cherish a comical “hail fellow well met” type, eager for conversation and filled with an inexplicable sense of bonhomie–perhaps played by a George Tobias, Red Skelton or Frank McHugh? Might another compelling favorite be those Charon-like figures behind the wheel, ferrying passengers across the dark city, musing philosophically about the pulse of the lifeblood of the city while guiding those in the back seat to a physical and spiritual destination–weightier characters captured by such diverse actors as Tom D’Andrea and Paul Lukas?

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With St. Patrick’s Day almost upon us, in this, the second of my attempts to honor women in film history during March, I need to get a bit personal.

Growing up, my red-haired sister and I always felt different, even though our parents, both of whom were of Irish descent, taught us to take a quiet pride in the achievements in arts, letters, and public life by the Irish around the world. While we adopted their low key approach to this ethnic pride as Irish-Americans, while honoring others in this melting pot, we soon learned that you just can’t blend in easily with a crowd when you have this unmanageable mop of red curls that refuse to behave. Short bobs, annoying barrettes and preventive measures to stave off the endless threat of some wickedly painful sunburns were sometimes our lot. People would literally stop us on the street to talk about this undeniable feature, asking us if we were from Ireland, much to our embarrassment.  Kids, being nature’s hard-core conformists, did enjoy pointing out regularly that we were “different.” That may not sound too bad, and it wasn’t, in retrospect, but phrases such as “red-headed stepchild” or comments about “fiery temperaments” really did make us feel a bit odd at times. Throughout history, the hair color, caused by a set of recessive chromosomes that have been reported in recent news stories as nearing extinction, has been the subject of fascination and quite often outright persecution.  I should probably be happy that I was born in a relatively benign era when titian-colored tresses didn’t get you burned at the stake, buried alive, mistaken for a vampire, or stoned at birth.  READ MORE

Amid our recent hectic news cycles, the quieter news that the month of March is Women’s History Month probably seems pretty unimportant. I know it passed me  by until a friend recently remarked that it seemed “quaint and irrelevant” to him. I must admit that I could see his point. Then I started to mull over the idea of the sometimes little known contributions of my foremothers to this world. Maybe some of the women who helped to make new pathways for all of their daughters, sisters and friends of the “female persuasion” deserve a bit of a nod.

So, during March I’ll be highlighting a few of the women in film history in front of and behind the camera who made a difference. The first of them is someone whose work you’re almost certain to have seen, though remarkably few people know her name or her story. She was Margaret Booth (1898-2002) and her influence as a pioneer film editor–for good and ill–on movies extends from her first formal credit of Orphans of the Storm (1921) to The Way We Were (1973) and beyond. In 1977, when she was in her ’70s, Film Comment magazine asked her fellow film editors (many of whom were half a century younger) to name the top editors in film history. She was Number Three and still playing an active role in the film world then. To help me place this pivotal figure’s career in some insider perspective, my friend Lynn Zook, who is a present day film editor and archivist has been of great help to me. Her comments will be laced throughout this brief look at Margaret Booth‘s career.

The year 1915 was before women had the vote, could own property in most states without their father or husband’s consent, and was a time when women’s choices were often the home, the sweatshop or the street. This is when Margaret Booth (seen in her prime, above left) began to work on silent pictures.  It wasn’t a career choice for her, it was a matter of her family’s survival. READ MORE

No interviews, please. That’s always been one of the blessings of animals in movies. These stoic creatures don’t complain and they don’t explain in public, no matter how much we anthropomorphize their reactions to the world. Nor do they ever tell us their views on life, love or politics. They just are, enduring our endless attempts to project onto them our longing to understand and bridge the gulf that inevitably lies between us.

Since the upcoming Oscar award ceremony has yet to feature a Best Animal Actor Award, I started to muse about which of the warm blooded mammals found in the movies who’ve beguiled me over the years might be a prime candidate for an Oscar–if they gave one. There are horses, (Flicka, Trigger, and Black Beauty, for instance), cats, (Thomasina, Pyewacket, Rhubarb), pigs, (Babe, Wilbur), lions, sheep, pumas, deer, and even wild boars to choose from, ( the latter make great villains, as anyone who’s seen Home From the Hill and The Yearling will testify).

Since a merger between the PATSY Awards and those given by AMPAS each year is highly unlikely, I’d like to make a case for at least one Academy Award worthy creature whose charismatic presence in the popular imagination has continued to this day. (The PATSYs are the Picture Animal Top Star of the Year given by the American Humane Association, an award created to prevent animal cruelty on movie sets after a notorious accident on the set of Jesse James (1939) finally got the public’s attention about the treatment of animals during filming).

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I’ve never met anyone remotely like Ronald Colman (1891-1958). It’s better that way.

He had an impossible to replicate, highly theatrical blend of the lighthearted and the grave that sparkled behind his brown eyes–a quality that seems to have vanished from this world. Oddly, his quiet, often surprisingly modern style, (especially when compared with his screen contemporaries), seems to be overlooked today, whether he is acting in a playful role such as his first talkie,  Bulldog Drummond (1929), playing a disillusioned husband in Cynara (1932),  the touching  amnesiac in Random Harvest (1942) or in his deeply felt part as Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities (1935). His characters, which he recognized were often shadows of an earlier time in British history even as he played them with such style, have an elusive grace  that was often imitated but uniquely his own.

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Any films buffs near Denver this November 13 – 23 are advised to check out the 31st Starz Denver Film Festival. Here is a glimpse at what S.D.F.F. offers: Red Carpet Presentations (gala screenings with special guests followed by parties), Special Presentations (these are titles that programmers feel are destined for various awards), Films In Competition that vy for The Krysztof Kieslowski Award (reflecting the sensibilities of the late Polish director), the Emerging Filmmaker Award (presented to first or second-time directors who have yet to gain U.S. distribution), and the Maysles Brothers award for Best Documentary (presented annually by Albert Maysles to a feature-length nonfiction film without U.S. distribution). But that’s not all, there’s also: Contemporary World Cinema (one of my favorite sections), Documentary Films, a New Directors Showcase, a Tributes section (this year bringing out Carolee Schneemann, Richard Jenkins, Majid Majidi, Thomas Imbach, and Wally Pfister), a showcase called In Memoriam for recently departed artists (this year: Anthony Minghella, Paul Newman, and Sydney Pollack), a selection of late-show/cult fare titled The Watching Hour, two  different platforms for short films (one for vets, one for students), and this year a spotlight on animation. Also: too many attending guests, panel discussions, etc., to list here. Phew! Still with me? Good. Below is a brief look at four films screened at the 31st S.D.F.F. 

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I’ll bet as soon as you read the title for this post and saw the dancing box of popcorn, the tune from this famous snack-bar ad began running through your head. Expect it to stay there for a few days! I have been singing “Let’s all go to the lobby . . .” for a week, ever since I ran across an article about the making of this famous bit of Americana. I discovered that the ad was produced by a Chicago company called Filmack Studios, and puffed up with hometown pride, I decided to investigate.

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A few months ago, I saw a charming Mexican film called My Dear Tom Mix (Mi Querido Tom Mix (1991), directed by Carlos Garcia Agraz). Set in a small Mexican village during the 1920s, the nostalgic fable tells the story of  Joaquina, a woman of mature years who has never married. Her time is filled with going to the movies, where she lets her imagination take her away. When her young nephew comes for a visit, she introduces him to the magic of the cinema. For Joaquina—and countless other movie fans—that magic is dependent on ignoring the distinction between the movie stars and the characters they play. When marauding bandits plague her small town, she writes to legendary western hero Tom Mix, the King of the Cowboys, imploring him to ride to the rescue on Tony the Wonder Horse to save her village.  And, in a way, he obliges—not so much the cowboy himself but the spirit of Tom Mix. It is this spirit of larger-than-life heroism, long associated with the western hero, that My Dear Tom Mix celebrates. While the spirit lives on in some Hollywood movies, it was virtually a mandate during the silent era, not only for onscreen heroes but also for offscreen movie stars.

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Even in his relative youth on film, Trevor Howard was an unlikely film star. He always looked older than he was. His was a plain, simple face, with a nose broken long ago, rather large ears, a rough cheek, a mouth tight with resolution, (or is it pain?), eyes that seem haunted by unforgettable sights and feelings, and a voice, when he wasn’t asked to waste time playing one of those “Thanks awfully, old chap” type of parts, capable of both a fairly devastating restrained romanticism and gruff, hard-earned cynicism. In other words, he may have been a perfect exemplar of how an average Brit saw himself at the end of WWII.

One of the pleasures of this year’s Summer Under the Stars is seeing some seriously rare films–such as the broadcast of Barbara Stanwyck‘s first feature last night, The Locked Door (1929), (and boy, did the lock on that early talkie creak when they opened it–though any curiosity I might ever have had about Rod La Rocque is now satisfied), and the upcoming airing of Frank Borzage‘s quietly powerful Man’s Castle (1933) with Spencer Tracy and Loretta Young on August 31st.

While many of the performers featured each day are quite familiar to us, the lineup of films for one outstanding individual this Friday, August 22nd, when TCM will devote 24 hours to an exploration of Trevor Howard‘s films, is most welcome, (please click here for a list of the movies on that day). READ MORE