I love Mary in Palm Beach Story , but I have yet to love the film itself. Watching Joel MacRae playing wall-to-wall petulance is a little wearing on me. Maybe it's because I don't watch him with the same agenda as you ladies. Second favorite in that zany romp is Rudy Vallee. His is a very studied, m...

Mary Astor is one of my top screen crushes. I just can't get enough of her. Sometimes that's a problem because she seems to play supporting roles more often than leading ones. I love Behind Office Doors because it's all about Mary. As you say Maven, the story itself is a little shopworn, but she mak...

I wonder if George Raft liked chocolate. But then again, who doesn't?

Mahatma Gandhi said, "Good travels at a snail's pace." Let's be confident that our heartfelt conversations in this little corner of the world are moving things forward in the right direction.

I'm a big Jobyna booster myself, and have a lot of her films with Harold Lloyd. She has an interesting relationship with the camera lens. Sometimes she looks like an ordinary, somewhat plain girl, and then BAM, the light and the camera catch her just right and she transforms into a luminous beauty.

moirafinnie wrote: The Black Cat (1934) is scheduled for next week on Svengoolie.

I don't get Svengoolie, but I'll definitely watch my copy in solidarity.

I haven't watched Polly of the Circus lately, but I'll give it another look soon. To my eye, it isn't too far into the thirties when the ravages of alcoholism start to affect her looks and verve. But my love of Marion is so firmly cemented by The Patsy , I'll stick with her through any picture. The ...

My story is similar to yours, JF. I've seen the photos and heard the names, but have very little sense of (most of) these starlets as performers. I watched a you-tube copy of The Flapper with Olive Thomas and wished that we had more of her to enjoy. Number six isn't Theda Bera, is it? Sort of on the...

They really did "pull out all the stops" on the production, and Lugosi's performance is no exception. When he delivers the lines (containing the words) " HALF MEN, HALF BEASTS...THINGS," there is a searing pain in his voice and body. It goes way beyond melodrama.

I've always wanted to see her in Tobacco Road.

I don't get Svengoolie in my neck of the woods, but I did recently pick up the Criterion edition of Island of Lost Souls on DVD. The image quality is just incrementally better than the bootleg I acquired a few years ago, but the sound quality is superbly improved. I also really enjoyed the extras on...

I have a Garbo documentary that describes her first days at MGM. Apparently, there were more than a few skeptics about Mayer's new "find" from his recent European tour. It wasn't until a certain cinematographer -- I don't recall his name -- put just the right lighting on her that they real...

I watched Crime and Punishment (1935) the other day, the Peter Lorre vehicle with Marian Marsh in the female lead. There are a couple of points in the film where Von Sternberg photographs Marsh with the trademark Dietrich lighting, and I thought "Wow, she looked like Dietrich for a second there...

The documentary "Discovering the It Girl" is also included on the Kino release of IT . It's the one narrated by Courtney Love. Is that the one you're talking about CCF? What makes that documentary uplifting for me -- and to your point -- is that they end it with a comment by her son. He re...

Happy New Year, you lovely people.