Julius Garfinkle’s high integrity 5
Aug
2
2010
Blacklisted actor John Garfield, né Julius Garfinkle, was the subject of a curtain talk at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences following a screening of his enthralling boxing movie, Body and Soul (1947), part of the Academy’s screenwriter-driven film-noir series. Garfield’s unswerving dignity as a Jewish boxer (improbably named Charlie Davis) dominates the ...
Meet Ernest Belcher’s prize pupil, Pola Negri 2
News of the digital restoration of The Spanish Dancer (1923) by Milestone Film & Video and the Eye Film Museum caught our fancy for several reasons. The silent movie is promoted as a “great romance epic,” and gosh, you can never get enough of that, right? In its making, director Herbert Brenon employed a “cast ...
Beautiful work, Miriam Nelson, in ‘Picnic’ (1955) 5
It was a delight to learn, after checking credits (“Who did this?”) on this sexy dance between William Holden and Kim Novak in PICNIC (1955), a YouTube phenomenon, that the choreographer was our good friend Miriam Nelson who died in 2018 at age 98. Deliciously done, Miriam. It was my honor to share a meal ...
A heady evening with Hedy Lamarr 2
Nov
16
2010
While he was growing up in Ottawa, Illinois, the film writer Stephen Shearer’s mother told him that in 1939 she and a girlfriend went to the local cinema to see Charles Boyer in “Algiers.” Co-starring with the Frenchman was MGM’s latest European import, Hedy Lamarr. In her first appearance in the film, cinematographer James Wong ...
Second star to the right …
Jul
1
2010
Second star to the right … and straight on till morning. With that lovely language, Peter Pan ‘google-maps’ his Neverland address, informing his new buddy Wendy where he and the tribe of Lost Boys reside. The fetching 1924 silent-movie version of the J.M. Barrie classic, directed by Herbert Brenon, charmed nearly 2,000 adults who poured ...
Even in 1924 Peter Pan wouldn’t grow up 2
May
16
2010
So come with me, where dreams are born, and time is never planned. Just think of happy things, and your heart will fly on wings, forever, in Never Never Land! — J.M. Barrie I’m very excited to see PETER PAN (1924), the delicious silent film offering of the Los Angeles Conservancy’s annual summer film fest, ...