Before Tonya Harding, there was Vera Hruba Ralston

Film
The Flame. 1947. USA. Directed by John H. Auer. Screenplay by Lawrence Kimble, based on the story by Robert T. Shannon. With John Carroll, Vera Ralston, Robert Paige, Broderick Crawford, Henry Travers, Hattie McDaniel. DCP. 97 min. John Carroll plots to relieve his brother (Robert Paige) of his inheritance, with the help of femme fatale ...

Rauschenberg dance contributions recognized in live MoMA performance

Architecture & Design · Dance · Visual arts
Who’s going to New York? Oh, you already live there? Then get thee to MoMA on Wednesday, September 6, for a curated performance of mid-century dance masterworks at the vaunted MoMA Sculpture Garden twice that day. The dance program accompanies Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends, the exhibit now on at the Museum through September 17. Rauschenberg ...

Klimt’s ‘Adele II’ rightly in private hands, says ‘Woman in Gold’ attorney 2

Visual arts
News of media mogul Oprah Winfrey’s recent sale of Gustav Klimt’s “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II,” for a massive $150 million was the buzz of the art world this week. Bloch-Bauer died in 1925, and her Klimt paintings passed, against her wishes, to the Austrian state during the Nazi regime. Her descendants, led by her ...

On arts·meme’s front page: ‘The Front Page’

Film · Ideas & Opinion
So very excited to see the restored (by the Academy Film Archive ·and the Film Foundation) first film version of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s 1928 Broadway comedy, “The Front Page,” which kicks off To Save and Project at the Museum of Modern Art. According to MoMA adjunct curator Dave Kehr (he and curator Josh ...

Wyler’s ‘House Divided’ rises from the vaults @ MoMA

Film · Reviews
by 
A House Divided — it’s one of those handy generic titles that has lent itself to half a dozen movies and a whole lotta TV episodes over the years. Back in 1931, it was an especially apt name for an early talkie starring Walter Huston, neatly encapsulating the drama’s dark oedipal stew. It’s a work ...

We love Hollywood ballet

Dance · Film
‘Normal’ ballet is so boring: Petipa, Balanchine, Tudor, Robbins, Ratmansky.  Those guys never put girls in pointe shoes on pianos. We prefer fancy, Hollywood-style ballet, like this photo from KING OF JAZZ (1930) made at Universal Pictures and featuring dancing by Russell Markert dancers (Markert, who, not surprisingly, founded the Rockettes, is listed as the ...

The son rises again: Universal Pictures producer Carl Laemmle, Jr. canon @ MoMA

Film · Music
Our friends in the film department at The Museum of Modern Art are launching a truly groundbreaking and fascinating retrospective that highlights a decade of distinguished moviemaking at Universal Pictures, the Hollywood film factory often wrongly valued primarily as a purveyor of horror fodder. Writes Universal Pictures: Restorations and Rediscoveries, 1928–1937 film curator Dave Kehr: ...

Critic Stephen Farber’s TCM Fest 2016 movie round-up 1

Film
by 
The fun of the TCM Classic Film Festival [arts•meme has covered since 2010] is the sheer range of offerings, from obscure rarities to Oscar-anointed hits. Three of my favorite events from this year’s festival featured memorable guest appearances. The Yearling was shown in a magnificent 35mm print from The George Eastman House. Not all studio ...

CBS morning show salutes MoMA film preservation effort

Film
A wonderful segment of CBS This Morning, devoted to the assiduous efforts by film curators, technicians, and other professionals of The Museum of Modern Art, toiling to restore gone-missing movies, scanning and cleaning cans of  crumbling celluloid to pristine, viewable condition. Curators Raj Roy and Dave Kehr, interviewed at MoMA’s off-site film facility in eastern ...

When Martin met Lewis

Film
… hair was king. The story of this wildly successful comedy pairing — their  youthful energy reenforced by Brylcreem — will be told in film clips, home movies, and kinescopes in the opening program of MoMA’s upcoming Jerry Lewis retrospective. photo courtesy Bob Furmanek The Birth of Martin and Lewis | The Museum of Modern ...