I am a sucker for old-school show-biz—vaudeville, follies-style Broadway revues, radio drama, television variety series. Tomorrow evening (Tuesday, January 10), one of my favorite movies airs on TCM. Set in 1954, My Favorite Year is an unabashedly nostalgic depiction of the days of live television. The story is told through the eyes of a young would-be comedy writer named Benji who is a gofer for Comedy Cavalcade, a popular television series starring King Kaiser. When legendary movie star Alan Swann is booked as a guest, Benji is assigned the task of getting him to the studio for rehearsal each day and keeping him sober.

Peter O’Toole received an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of Alan Swann. Walking a fine line between myth and parody, he gives Swan swagger and movie-star appeal while simultaneously exaggerating his drinking exploits into hysterically funny bits. Mark Linn-Baker costars as wise-cracking Benji, and Jessica Harper plays his love interest, who exists as a sounding board for explanations and theories by Benji on what constitutes “funny.” The scant storyline is enriched by colorful performances by an array of character actors, including Joseph Bologna as the egotistical King Kaiser, Lainie Kazan as Benji’s mother, Lou Jacobi as his uncle, Cameron Mitchell as Mafia kingpin Karl Rojeck, Anne De Salvo as comedy writer Alice Miller, and Bill Macy as head writer Sy Benson. In an odd bit of casting, Adolph Green—screenwriter of many MGM musicals, plays Leo Silver, producer of Comedy Cavalcade.

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I have something I need to say. It’s something I don’t say often enough, and for that I am sorry. You deserve to hear it. The words are few but powerful.

I love you. I love you, Muppet Movie.

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One of my favorite films airs tomorrow night, October 4, on TCM. In a Lonely Place is my favorite directorial effort by Nicholas Ray, with terrific performances by Humphrey Bogart and by Gloria Grahame.  Though a box-office disappointment when it was released in 1950, In a Lonely Place has since been recognized as a Nicholas Ray masterwork and written about from every possible angle.  It’s been discussed as an example of film noir, posited as an autobiographical retelling of Ray and Grahame’s disintegrating marriage, and dissected as a product of its paranoiac times (the HUAC investigations and the resultant Hollywood blacklist). I can’t improve on what most critics and historians have written about In a Lonely Place, but I thought I would offer some slightly disorganized observations on why I love this movie.

In a Lonely Place stars Humphrey Bogart as Dixon Steele, a Hollywood screenwriter who is down on his luck because of his drinking and his temper. Few studios and directors want to work with him, so he takes a job turning the latest potboiler novel into a screenplay.  Rather than read the novel, he asks a hatcheck girl, Mildred, to come home with him to tell him the story.  The film has a rich texture in which even small parts are memorable because of the fertile script and the pitch-perfect performances. Mildred is a working-class gal taken with the melodrama of the book who reaches beyond her education and station to describe the story. She notes that one of the male characters looks like a “bronze Apollo,” except she pronounces it “A-polo.”

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Brad Pitt was featured this past week in Parade magazine, the tiny Sunday supplement to most major-city newspapers. In the cover article, he beams about family life with wife Angelina Jolie and their six children. He created a stir among gossip columnists and Internet wags when he referred to his previous marriage to Jennifer Aniston as an inauthentic life, because he was trying “to pretend the marriage something that it wasn’t.” Whether the quote was taken out of context, or whether Pitt isn’t particularly articulate, it was an ungracious comment to make regarding Aniston. Pitt’s offending quote swept across the Internet, and he felt compelled to make a sort-of retraction. All of which played out before the article was even available in Sunday’s issue of Parade.  Pitt’s interview was insensitive to Aniston. Anyone who has ever been thrown over for another person, and then had to endure comments about how happy their former spouses are now that they have moved on, will blanch at his statements.  And, yet, I did not think them so nasty or insulting that they warranted a back-pedaling press statement.

A day or so later, I read an interview with Nora and Delia Ephron about their upcoming stage play opening in Chicago, Love, Loss, and What I Wore. The interview was so dull and the Ephrons’ comments so colorless that I didn’t make it through the article. Both the Brad Pitt feature and the Epron interview reminded me that today’s celebrity interviews are as dull and rote as those found in studio-controlled fanzines of the Golden Age. They exist to promote a new film, a new play, or a new television series but do little to reveal the personality or career of the star or director. Many reasons account for this, including the lack of experienced journalists and interviewers who know how to ask the right questions and provide insightful context for the answers.

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When I was a little girl, I watched soap operas with my mother, making me a life-long fan of the many subgenres and stylings of melodrama. In addition to the daytime dramas, we faithfully tuned in every Tuesday and Thursday evening to watch Peyton Place, a prime-time soap based on Grace Metalious’s originally scandalous novel. The most memorable character for me was not Mia Farrow’s Allison MacKenzie nor Ryan O’Neal’s Rodney Harrington but Constance MacKenzie, who was played by Dorothy Malone. I became a fan of Malone, whose sultry presence and worldly demeanor bubbled beneath the surface of the character, a lonely but noble single mother in a town full of narrow-minded hypocrites.

Malone excelled at playing women who had a past, whether that included regrets over dalliances with bad men or memories of affairs with good ones. Through the experiences of Malone’s characters, you come to realize that there really isn’t much difference. Sometimes trashy and hot-blooded, sometimes provocative and aloof, her most memorable characters are introduced carrying a dark secret or heavy burden, which seems to define them, or at least to motivate their behavior. The unfurling of the trauma and the unburdening of the load become a compelling part of the story. Throughout it all, her characters carry their inner pain with a gritty strength while remaining vulnerable—a delicate balance.

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As we’ve seen this past week on our Blondell Blog-a-thon, Miss Joan Blondell was a survivor.  Through her long movie career she always managed to come out on top, and her image as a plucky dame was one that audiences cherished and wouldn’t forget.  As her motion picture career began to slow down and she entered middle age — never a wonderful time for an actress, then as now — she was fortunate to still have some great career choices available to her.  Joan returned to the stage to much acclaim in the 1950s, and also began to appear on television during the same time, picking up roles on many of the prestigious dramatic  (and often live) anthologies of the TV’s early years.  In the first half of the decade she delighted audiences with roles on Schlitz Playhouse (as Calamity Jane), Suspense, Lux Video Theatre (with her A Tree Grows in Brooklyn co-star James Dunn), Fireside Theatre, Shower of Stars, G.E. True Theater, Shower of Stars, Playwrights ’56, Studio One, Playhouse 90, and The  United States Steel Hour.  The worst part about this fertile period in Joan’s career is that it’s pretty much impossible today to actually watch any of her performances in these very early TV series.  Our loss, for sure.

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In 1939, Joan Blondell left Warner Bros. for Columbia after her husband at the time, Dick Powell, decided that neither of them was getting their due from Jack Warner. Blondell worked regularly on the radio and on Broadway during the 1940s, only periodically returning to Hollywood. She divorced Powell, the love of her life, in 1945 after he fell in love with June Allyson. Two years later, she married Mike Todd, who is best remembered for his short-lived marriage to Elizabeth Taylor and as the producer of the overblown adventure film Around the World in 80 Days. Todd’s death in a plane crash during his marriage to Taylor has romanticized their union as a fairy tale about true love destroyed by an act of ill fate. But, Blondell’s marriage to Todd was no fairy tale. They divorced in 1950 amidst allegations of physical and emotional abuse. According to Blondell, he poisoned her dog out of sheer spite. In addition, he spent all of Blondell’s money, leaving her broke. As a result, the actress—now middle-aged and no longer leading lady material—worked at every opportunity. She appeared on stage, in live television drama, and as a character actress in the movies.

Despite the circumstances behind her increased work schedule, she embraced the opportunities, noting that she was more interested in the craft of acting than ever before. In 1951, she earned an Academy Award nomination for her performance in The Blue Veil, a nearly forgotten melodrama starring Jane Wyman.  A pro in every sense of the word, Blondell proved an excellent secondary player and character actress, who could spin any small role into a memorable turn in front of the camera. Among my favorite films from this period of her career is Frank Tashlin’s hysterically funny Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?

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The Silent Film Society of Chicago launched their Summer Film Festival a couple of weeks ago, and this year’s line-up includes A Girl in Every Port featuring Louise Brooks, Why Change Your Wife? with Gloria Swanson, Heart o’ the Hills starring Mary Pickford, Sunrise with Janet Gaynor, The Cardboard Lover featuring Marion Davies and The Mysterious Lady with Greta Garbo. The festival opted for a running theme this year—essential films from the era’s legendary actresses. Though the films are 80 years old, the meaty performances by these talented stars are a collective breath of fresh air compared to the women’s roles in contemporary Hollywood films. I know that female viewers are woefully underserved by Hollywood these days, but I didn’t realize how much until I saw Mary Pickford in Heart o’ the Hills and watched the women in the audience respond to her.

I am a relatively recent fan of Pickford’s work. Apparently, her movies were not always widely available, which accounts in part for this gap in my silent-film education, but I also confess I was under a mistaken impression regarding the type of characters she played. For years, her name summoned up an image of an eternally optimistic goody two-shoes with a sweet nature and wholesome values—a kitschy incarnation of her nickname “America’s Sweetheart.”

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This coming Saturday — tomorrow, August 6th – marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of show business’ forever and always top funny lady Lucille Ball, and also a day of Lucille Ball on TCM’s Summer Under the Stars.  It would be more than appropriate for anyone to celebrate this significant milestone, but I especially love Lucy.  My mother used to say that when I was a kid everytime she would come into a room I’d be watching I Love Lucy on TV, and I used to talk about it all the time.  Still do even today — watch and talk about it! READ MORE