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Laurel and Hardy's Struggle with Bad Scripts at 20th Century Fox
Laurel and Hardy fans lament the decline that the comedians suffered after signing with 20th Century Fox in 1941. In the next five years, the studio featured the team in six substandard films - Great...
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The Fireplace Gremlin
Humphrey Bogart in The Big Shot (1942)Francois Truffaut asked Alfred Hitchcock:. . . [T]he British director who wanted to do a picture in your style – an imitation of your style – Lee Thompson had his...
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The Quicksand Chronicles
I am rarely defeated by a topic, but I was recently found myself at a loss while writing an article about quicksand scenes in films. I was, to be frank, defeated resoundingly. The topic is too big to...
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Postscripts to My Book "I Won't Grow Up"
Today, I have a few postscripts to my book "I Won't Grow Up." In 2012, Rowan Atkinson said that he had become too old to play Mr. Bean. I included this statement in my book. But now Atkinson has...
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Two Guys from Texas (1948)
Two Guys from Texas (1948) is, in style and story, a bridge between Abbott and Costello's Ride 'Em Cowboy (1942) and Martin and Lewis'Pardners (1956). The films have essentially the same plot: during...
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Dog Mommies
Dog mommy Myrna Loy in Shadow of The Thin Man (1941)This a follow-up to my 2019 article "Mothers Have Gone to The Dogs."Here is a glimpse of the dog mommy in 1930s films.You can see from the following...
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Motivation, Purpose and Resolution Are Important to Storytelling
I love old films. Do you know what's great about an old film? It's not a new film. A new film has one fatal flaw: it's made by people who have disdain for their audience. In the very least, the old...
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The Peril of The Smoking Pipe
An actor should never fall in love with a prop. In Cover Up (1949), William Bendix builds his performance as a thoughtful small town sheriff around a smoking pipe. The overused pipe is a distraction...
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Images from Three Films
Edmund Lowe and Claire Trevor tangle with gamblers, blackmailers and diamond smugglers while traveling aboard a luxury liner in Black Sheep (1935). The film's cinematographer was three-time Oscar...
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A Random Collection of Film Images
Billy De Wolfe and Mona Freeman in Isn't It Romantic (1948)Rochelle Hudson guns down Bruce Cabot in Show Them No Mercy! (1935). James Gleason, one of the most popular and prolific character actors of...
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Images from Blue Angel (1930)
I had to make screen captures of The Blue Angel (1930) for an upcoming article, but I ended up with more images than I needed. So, I figured to share those extra images here.I will explain the plot...
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The Expressive Female Face
Filmmakers often capitalize on the beauty and openness of a woman's face. Marie Laforêt in La fille aux yeux d'or (1961)Marlène Jobert in Rider on the Rain (1970)Julie Gholson in Where the Lilies Bloom...
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Rainy Days in Hollywood
The Cameraman (1928)Buster has developed a crush on a pretty young secretary, Sally. One rainy night, while he parts from Sally at a café, Sally impulsively leans forward and kisses him on the cheek....
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Tidbits for June, 2021
Geoffrey Toone and Hildegard Knef in The Man Between (1953)An Amazon customer wrote the following about Public Enemy (1931): "I didn't care much for the film. Just a bunch of scenes with James Cagney...
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Thoughts on the Sitcom, Part 1: Joke-Light Comedy
A year or two ago, I came across a 1979 script from the Taxi TV series. The script was for an episode called "The Great Race." I had remembered this being a funny episode. So, it surprised me when I...
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Thoughts on the Sitcom, Part 2: The B Plot Destroyed the Sitcom
Originally, a sitcom centered on a single plot. The plot had to be carefully structured to sustain it for twenty-six minutes. This was an important duty for the writer. But the sitcom changed over...
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Early Comedy Films from André Deed, Marcel Perez, Little Chrysia, Eduardo...
Any person interested in the history of film comedy should never turn down an opportunity to see an early French comedy film. This is where it all started. In the 1912 Lux comedy Cunégonde trop...
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Slapstick Comedians Become Character Actors
I always love to see old slapstick comedians show up in character roles.Hank Mann Those We Love (1932)From Headquarters (1933)Irene (1940)You Can't Escape Forever (1942)Always In My Heart (1942) The...
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A Few Random Thoughts on Acting
Acting is pretend. Acting is illusion. We learn this at an early age. But, still, I believed for many years that an actor invested a bit of himself into every role, which meant that every role he...
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A Train Station Routine
An exceptional collection of comedy routines turns up in It's a Great Feeling (1949). There's a funny scene at a train station that is reminiscent of the Marx Brothers' Tutti Frutti ice cream sketch....
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