Last year, I wrote a paper on the unproduced Arthur Freed musicals—that is, the films that the Freed unit had started or planned to make, but, for various reasons, never actually finished or, in many cases, even began to film. Of course, the Freed unit was famous for some of the most iconic movie musicals …
In many ways, Lured is a kind of dark cousin to the jaunty backstage musical comedies that populated the 1930s. Lucille Ball stars as Sandra, a taxi dancer who spends her evenings getting fed stale one-liners from even staler old men. Throughout the film, she gets to wear fancy dresses, go on dates to the …
Myra Hudson is a woman in control of her life. As a successful playwright, and an heiress to a significant fortune that she doesn’t particularly want or need, her life seems to be perfect. She knows how to confidently assert her opinions, she doesn’t back down—and people listen. This confidence causes problems for her though, …
While FX’s Feud may have made an unsavory introduction of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis to non-classic movie fans, some theaters took the show’s popularity as an opportunity to highlight the earlier work that made them stars. Here in Los Angeles, the Egyptian Theatre programmed a Bette vs. Joan series of four films over two nights: Bette Davis in All About …
When you start to watch a musical made in 1954, starring Jane Powell and Debbie Reynolds, with the same songwriters as Meet Me in St. Louis, you might think you have a pretty solid concept of what’s to come before you’ve even hit play. But that’s not quite the case with Athena, a film that seems to actively avoid many of this era’s favorite …
It’s no secret that I love a good sailor musical, so when I caught wind of the getTV Mickey Rooney Blogathon, hosted by Once Upon a Screen, Outspoken & Freckled and Paula’s Cinema Club, it took only a moment’s perusal of the channel’s upcoming schedule to make my pick: All Ashore, the 1953 musical in which Rooney plays, yup, a sailor on …