Travis Banton undresses Miriam Hopkins
Jul
19
2010
We’re midway through Ian Birnie’s weekend film retrospective of the American-made comedies of Ernst Lubitsch at LACMA. Last weekend, we levitated in pleasure under the spell of “Design for Living“ (1933), the sophisticated German-born film director’s version of the Noel Coward play. Two Americans sharing a flat in Paris, playwright Tom Chambers (Frederic March) and ...
All hail Travis Banton, Paramount Pictures costume designer
LACMA’s retrospective of Ernst Lubitsch comedies, made in America with a classy European sensibility, opened with the giddy perfection of the German-born director’s “Trouble in Paradise” (1932). Of all the ingredients simmering in this film’s sweet stew, it’s the pre-code evening gowns in which “Trouble”‘s two leading ladies circulate the sound stage dropping witty dialogue ...
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 ...
Lizabeth Scott @ the Academy 5
Jun
29
2010
Co-published on Huffington Post arts page. Monday night’s edition of the Academy’s first-rate full-summer film series, “1940s Writing Nominees from Hollywood’s Dark Side,” now at mid-schedule, enjoyed the tremendous pleasure of a guest appearance by actress Lizabeth Scott. The heavy-browed, sultry-voiced Scott graced 22 movies, primarily film noirs made between 1945-57 in which she played ...
Jane Russell remembers “Gentleman” Jack Cole 3
“Yes,” answered Jane Russell last Wednesday evening, nodding emphatically when asked if choreographer Jack Cole had directed the dance sequences in Howard Hawks’s “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1953). Russell’s brown eyes flashed and she became animated on hearing Cole’s name. The brunette bombshell of the 1940/50’s, appearing at a Hollywood Heritage event this past week, chatted ...
Norman Lloyd remembers
“Music to my ears,” cooed veteran stage and film actor Norman Lloyd in response to the fervent applause that greeted his appearance at Hollywood Heritage’s wonderful “Night at the Barn” lecture series held at the DeMille-Lasky barn. The 95-year-old Lloyd credits his lifelong love of tennis with helping him outlive his former collaborators Orson Welles, ...
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, ...
1927 was a very good year 1
Apr
29
2010
Fritz Lang’s METROPOLIS with 25 minutes of lost footage restored and live accompaniment by Alloy Orchestra: a huge event for cinephiles. It was the penultimate closing-night event of TCM Classic Film Festival. Everyone loved it. Everyone except arts•meme … I found it overwhelming and incomprehensible. What tickled me, however, was watching the acknowledged German masterpiece dating ...
Ernest Borgnine chats about JUBAL
Apr
27
2010
Cowboy actor Glenn Ford’s steady presence and a rapturous Grand Teton setting made the Technicolor ‘psychological western,’ JUBAL (1956), my favorite film of TCM Fest. Yes when arts•meme isn’t kvelling over Mozart or Balanchine, she likes a good western! Actor Ernest Borgnine, the prodigious character actor who co-stars with Ford and Rod Steiger in the ...
Icy Gene Tierney in blazing Technicolor 1
Apr
26
2010
We enjoyed the restored LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN (1945) the Technicolor/noir-esque soap opera starring Gene Tierney and Cornel Wilde, a top-grossing 20th Century-Fox film of the 1940s that had kind of gone missing. The love story-turned-sour reminds us of the negative trajectory of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary or, frankly, of the many noir potboilers in which a ...