How now, Shirley MacLaine @ TCM Fest 2015
Shirley MacLaine made a few appearances at this year’s TCM Classic Film Festival, and she enthralled audiences with her candor. She revealed that when she first received the script for the Oscar-winning film, The Apartment, it was only 29 pages long. Director Billy Wilder and his longtime writing partner, I.A.L. Diamond, continued writing as filming ...
Ann Miller, in KISS ME KATE 3-D, too darn hot! 1
It was awfully fun, during TCM Fest 2015, to run into Jon Olivan who heads up the TCM Classic Movie Fan Club in Los Angeles. We mixed and mingled in Club TCM, sipping (complementary) Humphrey Bogart gin surrounded by Mike Kaplan’s great dance-movie posters exhibited in that lounge. Olivan shared a special memory of “Kiss ...
Stephen Farber’s TCM Fest 2015 movie round-up
I interviewed Ann-Margret at an Academy screening of Bye Bye Birdie three years ago, so it was great to see her again at this year’s TCM Classic Film Festival, where she introduced a screening of The Cincinnati Kid. The film’s original director, Sam Peckinpah, cast her in the movie, though Peckinpah was replaced by Norman ...
Lost and found: Houdini has ‘Game’
Among the many mysteries surrounding Harry Houdini is the question of whether he might have parlayed his charismatic stage persona into sound-era movie stardom. The peerless illusionist and escape artist died almost precisely a year before the release of the first feature-length talkie, The Jazz Singer. His filmography consists of five silent films, the second ...
Out came the stars @ TCM Fest 2015
Mar
29
2015
The stars are only part of the allure of Turner Classic Movies classic film festival. The Festival also features the artisans and craftspeople of classic Hollywood. Capturing it all is a roster of top event photographers. Photo credit: Edward M. Pio Roda, Adam Rose, Tyler Golden for TCM
Lizabeth Scott a ‘Tigresse’ to die for
A take-no-prisoners film noir, “Too Late for Tears” is saddled with a title that has all the clout of an unused tissue. Its alternate title, “Killer Bait,” is marginally less flimsy. But it was under the far more fitting French handle, “La Tigresse,” that a duplicate negative of the 1949 low-budget picture, which had badly ...
TCM & Starline partner for movie lover’s ramble through Los Angeles
There are two in every crowd, and they usually end up sitting near me: the people who keep talking throughout the movie — or, in this case, the Movie Locations Tour. But on a bright spring morning, when I had the rare chance to play tourist in the city where I live, the gabfest behind ...
Dance critic’s TCM Fest 2015
On the cusp of the sixth annual TCM Classic Film Festival set to open Thursday night in Hollywood, our dance-critic’s eye is finding at least two strong movie musical entries — with great cinematic dance. 42ND STREET (1933), Saturday March 28, 11:30 am “Naughty, gaudy, bawdy, sporty” 42ND STREET gets a facelift with the world premiere ...
Tap across 42nd Street with “Gotta Dance!” book & movie posters
Above: Belgian poster for 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, USA, 1933). Artist unknown. “The sharp, spunky granddaddy of all backstage musicals… [Busby Berkeley’s] choreography takes center stage in this stunning Belgian poster, showcasing his dancers atop and within the three-dimensional title treatment… the actors took second place to Busby Berkeley’s dazzling, kaleidoscopic production numbers, with their ...
Meet arts·meme’s TCM Fest team of writers
Mar
1
2015
It’s March — and that means a fun countdown to TCM’s Classic Film Festival in Hollywood, the four-day maelstrom of movie mania that kicks in on March 26. arts·meme has enjoyed a regular presence at the Festival, having covered it annually since its inception in 2010. This year, it’s a divide-and-conquer strategy as critics Stephen ...