Or Eleanor Powell. Holy Moly!!!

I saw that web site too, Fossy, when an internet search said they had some film that was really hard to find. I emailed them first, just to say hi and let them know I was interested in obtaining one of their films. When I didn't hear back from them, I abandoned the idea.

Tarzan and his Mate is the only film directed by MGM's chief Art Director Cedric Gibbons. I'd love to know more of that backstory. One thing I noticed is that he seems to hand out the "beauty shots" equally to Weismuller and O'Sullivan alike. For me, the most captivating thing about Weism...

Got it.
[Too bad about my old man. He was great}
Do you have Ann Carver's Profession?

I looked on Amazon US and the Fay Wray Collection they had on there was comprised of two films, The Most Dangerous Game and The Vampire Bat , both of which I have in my collection already. Your film sounds like a lot of fun, Fossy. I'm a big Fay Wray fan myself. Not only is she lovely to look at, bu...

During a screening of So This Is Paris during MOMA's virtually complete Lubitsch retrospective in the seventies, about ten minutes after the Charleston contest, a reel already projected appeared. Arthur Kleiner, the pianist at that time did not miss a beat, but managed to ring up the booth. The aud...

I'm sure you would enjoy it (them), JF. Obviously, she can't write about everything that happened or every film she was in. What we get is a well-balanced pastiche -- more or less chronologically ordered -- that seems to strike a balance between what she wants to say and what we as fans might want t...

I'm really enjoying Mary's book A Life On Film. I like the voice of it, its lack of pretense, its bittersweet sense of humor. She takes you into her confidence as though you are an old friend. Yesterday, I read her version of the backstory of the script development for The Great Lie (1941) which she...

I just wanted to amend my last post. I hadn't watched all of Beau Brummel when I wrote it. The final reel was lovely.

I just picked up Mary's A Life on Film from my public library, having wanted to read it for some time. I know a number of members here have read it. I just got to the part where she gets the role in Beau Brummel (1924) . In honor of the occasion, I watched the film after work. The film is certainly ...

According to the bio I read, Lorre and Bogart seemed to have had a solid friendship. Bogart tweaked Lorre during the filming of All Through the Night , when Lorre was getting serious about the female lead Kaaren Verne (eventually his second wife). Bogart took extra liberties as a leading man to taun...

Reading about Alison Skipworth's scene-stealing above reminded me of a story I read in the Peter Lorre biography The Lost One. Lorre and Raft appeared in the WWII adventure film Background to Danger. Apparently, there's a scene where Raft is tied up in a chair. They rehearsed it, and then, when it w...

Thanks KR. My public library has a VHS copy of Disraeli that I've ordered be sent to my local branch. [Hopefully it's of sufficient vintage that I can duplicate it to DVD on my Panasonic.] Florence Arliss plays a similar role in The House of Rothschild . You're right, they are charming together. It'...

The author doesn't say as much, but I think Zanuck (who was still quite young at the time) gained a lot of insight as a result of their association, that sense of "quality" that he took with him to 20th Century Fox. Arliss followed him to Fox, where he made his second group of films. He do...

In the forward to his book, Arliss writes a riff on the expression "box office poison" which is really quite funny. He calls his book "library poison." That was written in 1940. I wonder if that's a slight allusion to the fact that his style had become out of date. The most inter...