Key ingredient in Ebony Rep’s STEW? Family!

Theater
She’s equal parts Mildred Pierce, Julia Child, and Danai Gurira. She’s in her muu-muu with house slippers. Her hair is wrapped, and she’s cooking. She’s Greta Oblesby, playing “Mama,” in a marvelous, alive production of Zora Howard’s Pulitzer Prize-shortlisted play, STEW. Newly produced by Ebony Repertory Theater and directed by Jade King Carroll, it’s now ...

Joan Crawford: an actress who paid her dues before #metoo

Film
A great double bill, this Friday night, as part of “Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film” series on now at UCLA Film & Television Archive, two powerful films directed by Curtiz and starring Joan Crawford. Mildred Pierce (1945) Joan Crawford’s career-renewing turn is the primary but far from the only attraction adorning one of Michael ...

Hollywood’s cross-genre master Michael Curtiz gets biography

Film · Ideas & Opinion
Academy Award–winning director Michael Curtiz (1886–1962)—whose best-known films include Casablanca (1942), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Mildred Pierce (1945) and White Christmas (1954)—was in many ways the anti-auteur. During his 27-year tenure at Warner Bros., Curtiz directed swashbuckling adventures, westerns, musicals, war epics, romances, historical dramas, horror films, tearjerkers, melodramas, comedies, and film noir masterpieces. The ...