North by Northwest - free to the public...

When I was a little girl, the only director whose name I knew was Alfred Hitchcock. Though I didn't see any of his signature films of the era in a theater - Rear Window (1954), To Catch a Thief (1955), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959) - I must've seen the trailers, because I was well aware that he made exciting, colorful and glamorous movies.

"Errol Flynn Adventures" - DVD Boxed Set Giveaway and More...

Memorial Day weekend is just a few days away and in commemoration of this special holiday, The Lady Eve's Reel Life is giving away a copy of the DVD boxed set Errol Flynn Adventures from TCM Spotlight/Warner Home Video.

CMBA Movies of 1939 Blogathon - The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex

“In 1939, I secured my career and my stardom forever. I made five pictures in twelve months and every one of them was successful.” Bette Davis was referring to the string of movies she made in rapid succession, beginning with The Sisters in 1938 and followed by four more the next year – Dark Victory, Juarez, The Old Maid and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. If 1939 was a watershed year for Hollywood, it was, too, for the actress who was about to begin her reign as America’s top film actress.

EN ROUTE TO ELYSIAN FIELDS

When playwright Tennessee Williams decided to pick up where he left off on the play-in-progress he called The Poker Night, it was 1946 and he was comfortably ensconced in New Orleans in a French Quarter apartment overflowing with fine antiques.

Less than a year earlier, Williams's The Glass Menagerie had opened on Broadway. With this play, in the words of playwright Arthur Miller, Williams "lifted lyricism to its highest level in our theatre's history." But Williams struggled before this success came, suffering lean years after winning a special prize given by The Group Theatre in 1938. Though he had received grants, gotten a play produced and even been under contract as an MGM screenwriter during those years, none of it had panned out. His play Battle of Angels, starring Miriam Hopkins, previewed in Boston to good reviews, but created a furor and closed. He flopped at MGM, unwilling or unable to create "a celluloid brassiere for Lana Turner."

Marlene Dietrich Gets Personal in Charlotte Chandler's New Biography

Prolific biographer Charlotte Chandler has written on the life of a different film legend every year for the past 6 years, beginning with It's Only a Movie: Alfred Hitchcock in 2005. Her latest, Marlene, has just been published by Simon & Schuster.

Chandler's biographies are based on personal interviews. She includes filmography and career details, but her style is to convey the story of a life in the first-person as much as possible, using the subject's own words. This conversational approach gives the reader a sense of being in the room, listening in, as the story of a remarkable life unfolds.

Father of the Bride (1950)...and a reflection on mid-century Hollywood...

During World War II Hollywood churned out popular pictures both entertaining and patriotic, bolstering home front morale and earning enormous box receipts. Between 1942 and 1945, Americans were spending 23% of their recreation dollars on movies and by 1946 weekly attendance was over 90,000,000. But the boom years would soon go bust.

(Not Quite) All About Bette...

Bette Davis was born 103 years ago on April 5 in Lowell, Massachusetts. She attended drama school as a young woman and made her Broadway debut in "Broken Dishes" in 1929. She headed to Hollywood in 1930 where she was tested and signed by Universal. When her Universal contract was not renewed and she was on the verge of returning to New York and Broadway she received a call from Warner Bros. This was not exactly the beginning of a beautiful friendship, but it was the beginning of the truly legendary screen career of a groundbreaking actress.

STRANGERS ON A TRAIN...his best-remembered film

 Actor Farley Granger died in New York on Sunday at age 85. He'd begun his career in Hollywood under contract to Samuel Goldwyn and made his first film, The North Star, in 1943. Five years later he worked for the first time with Alfred Hitchcock on one of the director's most interesting exercises, Rope (1948), co-starring James Stewart and John Dall. In 1951 he again worked with Hitchcock and it is for this film, Strangers on a Train, that Granger is best remembered. The actor later left Hollywood to work on the New York stage; in 1986 he won an Obie Award for his performance in "Talley & Son." Though Farley Granger is not the specific focus, I'm posting this previously published reflection on Strangers on a Train in tribute to his life and career.

Hitchcock's Silent Version of Blackmail on the Big Screen

The era of talking pictures arrived while Alfred Hitchcock was working on his crime thriller, Blackmail, in 1929. The film had already been shot as a silent feature but during post-production the studio asked the director to convert it to partial sound so it could be marketed as a talking picture. Hitchcock, as was his way, had his own ideas. He began to tinker; scenes were reshot with dialogue, additional scenes with dialogue were added. In the end, Hitchcock had two films - his and Britain's much touted "first full length all talkie film" - and the original silent version. In 1929, most theaters in Britain were not equipped for sound, so it was the silent Blackmail that was for a long time the most widely seen and popular of the two films.