CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS (1937) I have watched Captains Courageous only twice because, frankly, I cannot abide Spencer Tracy’s portrayal of the Portuguese fisherman Manuel. In fact, I only watched it the second time because of Freddie Bartholomew’s superb performance and to see Lionel Barrymore ‘box his ears’ better than anyone has ever done […]
I often watch movies over and over again, just for the pleasure of re-visiting an extraordinary performance. Occasionally, as for instance with Double Indemnity (1944), it is not only an individual performance, but a combination of strong acting from more than one player, a fabulous script, seamless directing, and a […]
Fans of the 1957 movie version of the musical South Pacific will well remember the enchanting Eurasian girl who played Liat. France Nuyen came out of nowhere (literally) and became the dream girl of many men around the world who saw her playing Bloody Mary’s daughter on Bali Hai, […]
Movie-making has cost the lives of quite a few of those involved in the process. Stuntmen, cameramen, assistants, extras, plus the occasional director and actor have lost their lives down the decades. This is not a definitive list, not by a long shot, but it does demonstrate the perils that […]
1949 All the King’s Men – Best Picture Broderick Crawford – Best Actor for All the King’s Men Broderick Crawford Greg Peck as General Savage in Twelve O’Clock High Having seen all five nominated films for 1949, I am surprised that All the King’s Men came out on […]
1942 Mrs. Miniver – Best Picture Well, World War Two was in full swing and America was now in it, so a war picture (or at least a flag-waver) was bound to win Best Picture. And one did. There were four of these nominated: Mrs. Miniver, Wake Island […]
Stephen Boyd Stephen Boyd was born the youngest of nine children of a Northern Ireland family in 1928 and will more than likely become immortalized in cinematic history because of his memorable performance as Messala in the enormously successful 1959 blockbuster Ben-Hur. Charlton Heston may have secured the Oscar […]
Eve Arden was born Eunice Quedens in California in 1908. Her folks divorced when she was young and she quit school at 16 to join a stock theatre company. She made her film debut in Song of Love in 1929 and her Broadway debut (as Eve Arden) in […]
On October 24, 2015 the movie world lost one of its icons, the Irish-born beauty Maureen O’Hara. She was 95 years old. Having fallen in love with her screen image […]
A lot has been written about John Wayne and his early days as an actor in ‘B’ westerns during the 1930s, although even he thought ‘B-Grade’ was rather over-generous description. ‘Hell, they were a lot farther down the alphabet than that’, he recalled. And they were, too. Rock bottom in […]
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