Yesterday I posted the excellent final scene of legendary stage star Jeanne Eagels’ only surviving film ‘The Letter’ (1929). Today lets watch a very good breakdown scene from the 1957 Kim Novak-starring biopic ‘Jeanne Eagels’. The movie is largely fictionalized which is a shame–Eagels real life was filled with so
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FPJDHpXk_I Jeanne Eagels was a Broadway star of the 1920s whose short and lurid life became the stuff of legend before ultimately being totally forgotten. There was a heavily fictionalized 1957 Kim Novak biopic (appropriately titled ‘Jeanne Eagels’) which delved into some–if not all–of the dark aspects of her life
Let’s closed ‘fight week’ with another George Stevens directed fight sequence. Earlier this week we watched his superb fight scene from ‘Shane’ (which took place in a bar). The day before we caught the fight from John Sturges ‘Bad Day at Black Rock’ (which took place in a diner that
In 1980 (or thereabouts) I saw William Peter Blatty’s ‘The Ninth Configuration’ on the Z Channel, LA’s now legendary first run cable channel which featured lousy prints of new-ish movies. I was perhaps fifteen at the time and was so perplexed and mesmerized by this one-of-a-kind film that I promptly
If you’re going to get into a fight, why not combine it with some drinking? It will certainly make the idea of fighting seem more rational than if you were sober. Which brings us to ‘fight week’. On Monday we watched a fight in a diner (which more than likely
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4X24dPPg-8https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U_jzOepc8o Yesterday we watched the excellent fight scene from “Bad Day At Black Rock” in which an aging, one-armed Spencer Tracy kicks martial arts ass. Today we’ll watch what I consider to be the Grandaddy of all fight scenes, George Stevens virtuoso bar fight from ‘Shane’. I first saw ‘Shane’
Much as I deplore seeing people physically fighting in real life–it’s always such a jarring and disgusting sight–I LOVE a good fight scene in a movie. Let’s watch a few this week. First up is this fabulous sequence from ‘Bad Day At Black Rock’ in which Spencer Tracy (who has
‘Three Little Twirps’ (1943) is the 71st short comedy made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. It was photographed from Monday, August 3rd through Friday, August 7th, 1942 and was released on Friday, July 9th, 1943 (the 190th day of the Gregorian calendar). It marks the second and final
As we began this week with a little Benny Hill from his early, black and white BBC program, let’s end the week with another dose of Benny. (This is a practice known as ‘bookending’. Didn’t know that, did you?) Here is a parody of the then new phenomenon known as
Here is a British Pathe newsreel excursion to the exotic (to the British anyway) New York City neighborhood called Harlem. I leave it to you to have your own reaction to this footage–it seems to evoke strong responses from YouTube commenters many of whom are conflicted about how beautiful everything