In the 1930s, Universal laid claim to the two biggest horror stars of the era, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, and it was only a matter of time before the pair would meet on screen. In 1932, only months after each rocketed to stardom in Dracula and Frankenstein respectively, the two were dressed in tuxedoes and brought together for a genial photoshoot that simultaneously announced their partnership and implied a rivalry. Through a series of circumstances, it was another two years before the pair would star in a film together. As one might expect, it was in the most transgressive horror film of the era, 1934’s The Black Cat, a film that remains shocking not only for the early 1930s but even more surprising as a product overseen by the newly enforced Hays Code.
The Code had been established in 1927 as a self-censoring wing of the motion picture industry and an attempt to avoid government censorship.
The Code had been established in 1927 as a self-censoring wing of the motion picture industry and an attempt to avoid government censorship.
- 2/26/2024
- by Brian Keiper
- bloody-disgusting.com
If Hollywood truly suffers from a leadership malaise, as some charge, would the return of Monroe Stahr resuscitate the system? Filmmakers respect his judgment, stars his panache and investors his discipline, so Stahr’s return may ignite a new Irving Thalberg-like era.
Whoops — he’s not available.
The manic and manipulative hero of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon ruled MGM in its ‘30s heyday, but Stahr’s fictional reign was short-lived. So was Fitzgerald’s brilliant but never completed 1939 novel, which modeled Stahr after Thalberg.
Having achieved literary stardom with The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s decision to write a Hollywood novel, while simultaneously working as a script doctor, plunged the novelist into alcoholic paralysis. He never managed to finish his book and even his screenplays were unrealized.
The Last Tycoon briefly flickered back to life as a movie thanks to the great Elia Kazan, who cast Robert De Niro,...
Whoops — he’s not available.
The manic and manipulative hero of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon ruled MGM in its ‘30s heyday, but Stahr’s fictional reign was short-lived. So was Fitzgerald’s brilliant but never completed 1939 novel, which modeled Stahr after Thalberg.
Having achieved literary stardom with The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s decision to write a Hollywood novel, while simultaneously working as a script doctor, plunged the novelist into alcoholic paralysis. He never managed to finish his book and even his screenplays were unrealized.
The Last Tycoon briefly flickered back to life as a movie thanks to the great Elia Kazan, who cast Robert De Niro,...
- 1/4/2024
- by Peter Bart
- Deadline Film + TV
“That’s not art. A striptease isn’t art. It’s too direct. It’s more direct than art.”
That line from Akira Kurosawa’s “Ikiru” sums up a lot of feelings people seem to have about nudity in film. The history of painting and sculpture is full of nude portraiture, which is regularly and comfortably classified as art. But the nude scene in movies is rarely discussed alongside a Canova marble statue or Manet’s “Olympia.” Movies blur the boundaries between “real life” and artistic indirection so thoroughly that people discuss nude scenes in movies as practically everything but art. It’s “content” that deserves an “advisory,” or something akin to “porn,” however the Supreme Court is classifying that these days.
As many have noted, the very nature of the actor’s job demands the audience look at them. So when nudity enters the (literal) picture, it complicates the relationship between viewer and viewed.
That line from Akira Kurosawa’s “Ikiru” sums up a lot of feelings people seem to have about nudity in film. The history of painting and sculpture is full of nude portraiture, which is regularly and comfortably classified as art. But the nude scene in movies is rarely discussed alongside a Canova marble statue or Manet’s “Olympia.” Movies blur the boundaries between “real life” and artistic indirection so thoroughly that people discuss nude scenes in movies as practically everything but art. It’s “content” that deserves an “advisory,” or something akin to “porn,” however the Supreme Court is classifying that these days.
As many have noted, the very nature of the actor’s job demands the audience look at them. So when nudity enters the (literal) picture, it complicates the relationship between viewer and viewed.
- 6/28/2023
- by Alison Foreman and Wilson Chapman
- Indiewire
In the opening scene of "All About Eve," as theater critic Addison DeWitt (George Sanders) gives his voice-over at an awards dinner, more than one character sits smoking. Broadway star Margo Channing (Bette Davis) joins DeWitt in lighting up a cigarette indoors, and it's not the last time we'll see her doing that in the movie, as she deals with the machinations of another careerist actor named Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter).
With recognition in 14 categories, "All About Eve" became the most Oscar-nominated film of all time, a record that only two films, "Titanic" and "La La Land," have been able to tie since 1950. However, as detailed in the Sam Staggs book, "All About Eve: The Complete Behind-the-Scenes Story of the Bitchiest Film Ever Made," one scene where Margo smokes in bed caught the attention of a concerned viewer. J.R. Moser, a member of the Evansville, Indiana Fire Prevention Committee,...
With recognition in 14 categories, "All About Eve" became the most Oscar-nominated film of all time, a record that only two films, "Titanic" and "La La Land," have been able to tie since 1950. However, as detailed in the Sam Staggs book, "All About Eve: The Complete Behind-the-Scenes Story of the Bitchiest Film Ever Made," one scene where Margo smokes in bed caught the attention of a concerned viewer. J.R. Moser, a member of the Evansville, Indiana Fire Prevention Committee,...
- 8/28/2022
- by Joshua Meyer
- Slash Film
Having paid my 8.50 to see Top Gun: Maverick last weekend, my local cineplex inadvertently improved my appreciation of the film. For three minutes the sound clicked off and, minus dialogue, I was instantly caught up in the soaring jets, hyper-caffeinated cast and the durable charisma of its star. Then sound returned, the story unfolded and reality set in: This is not really a plot but a superbly crafted business plan, half video game and half military recruitment film. It’s the perfect structure for a Tom Cruise genre-bashing blockbuster.
Historians may ultimately cite the movie as a turning point — the film that reignited audiences, young and old, to pay homage to their movie palaces. FiIm critics may also single out the Top Gun sequel as a defiant reinvention of the classic war genre.
Does it measure up to the classics? Sure it does, but only Cruise would set out to...
Historians may ultimately cite the movie as a turning point — the film that reignited audiences, young and old, to pay homage to their movie palaces. FiIm critics may also single out the Top Gun sequel as a defiant reinvention of the classic war genre.
Does it measure up to the classics? Sure it does, but only Cruise would set out to...
- 6/2/2022
- by Peter Bart
- Deadline Film + TV
Part-Time Wife (1930)A “dame” is another word for a woman, but not all women are dames. Embodying both the vibrancy of the Jazz Age and the cynicism of the Great Depression, dames are fast-talking, sassy, and with a hard shell to match. Dames populate the world of early-1930s Hollywood cinema, personifying the socio-economic politics and (relative) gender progressivism of the decade. An upcoming MoMA film program entitled “Dames, Janes, Dolls, and Canaries: Woman Stars of the Pre-Code Era” explores the idea of the pre-Code Hollywood dame in all of her multitudes. Organized by film writer and historian Farran Nehme along with Dave Kehr and Olivia Priedite, the program showcases an array of talent from popular early-1930s actresses like Madge Evans, Mae Clarke, and Nancy Carroll, focusing specifically on stardom, femininity, and performance. Through this dive into the representation of gender in the pre-Code era (1929 to mid-1934), we can...
- 2/1/2022
- MUBI
Even those who consider themselves experts in the subject will find a provocative treasure trove of images and anecdotes in “Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies.” Danny Wolf’s documentary is a breezy, open-eyed, and often encyclopedic compendium of all the ways the cinema has celebrated, exploited, and negotiated the power of the naked body. The film opens with a montage of actors and directors recalling the first movie they ever saw that had nudity in it, and that allows the film, in its early moments, to leap through some of Nudity’s Greatest Hits.
As it moves back in time, one of the documentary’s fascinations is the way it’s constantly juxtaposing big Hollywood movies and European art movies and softcore exploitation films and everything in between. That, of course, is just as it should be. Aesthetically, there’s a world of difference between “Vixen” and “The Virgin Spring,...
As it moves back in time, one of the documentary’s fascinations is the way it’s constantly juxtaposing big Hollywood movies and European art movies and softcore exploitation films and everything in between. That, of course, is just as it should be. Aesthetically, there’s a world of difference between “Vixen” and “The Virgin Spring,...
- 8/19/2020
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
As the new documentary “Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies” points out, 2020 is a risky time to make movies that feature female nudity, particularly if it’s of the gratuitous kind. But, as “Skin” doesn’t say but does demonstrate, it’s also a risky time to make movies about onscreen nudity, even if you try to emphasize that it’s a work of scholarship not titillation.
To be sure, the film from writer-director Danny Wolf and writer Paul Fishbein (the “Time Warp” series of docs about cult films) takes a historical approach to the subject of on-screen flesh. It’s a chronological account that makes copious use of authors, critics, academics and even an art historian to talk about the place of the nude in art.
But it also illustrates the points they make with plenty of breasts, bums and penises. And its attempts to deal with...
To be sure, the film from writer-director Danny Wolf and writer Paul Fishbein (the “Time Warp” series of docs about cult films) takes a historical approach to the subject of on-screen flesh. It’s a chronological account that makes copious use of authors, critics, academics and even an art historian to talk about the place of the nude in art.
But it also illustrates the points they make with plenty of breasts, bums and penises. And its attempts to deal with...
- 8/18/2020
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
“Cockeyed philosophies of life, ugly sex situations, cheap jokes, and dirty dialogue are not wanted. Decent people don’t like this sort of stuff, and it is our job to see to it that they get none of it.” The words of American film censor Joseph Breen reverberated through Hollywood, changing the cinematic landscape for decades. Established in 1934, the Motion Picture Production Code (or Hays Code) enforced by Breen was given the power to approve films prior to release. They created strict guidelines as to what they considered moral and immoral behavior. Chief among the code’s list of “Don’ts” and “Be Carefuls,” and henceforth banned in films, was “any inference of sex perversion.” In Horror Film: An Introduction, author Rick Worland remarks that “Hollywood has a long history of equating homosexuality with criminality, perversion, and morose self-destruction.” However, Hollywood’s new standards did not achieve what they set out to do.
- 8/6/2020
- by Sara Clements
- DailyDead
1982: Gh's Luke and Robert searched for Holly in Canada.
1988: Gl's Rusty shot Will and tried to save Mindy.
1995: Loving's Gwyneth was revealed as the Corinth Killer.
2009: As the World Turns' Brad Snyder died."The best prophet of the future is the past."
― Lord Byron
"Today in Soap Opera History" is a collection of the most memorable, interesting and influential events in the history of scripted, serialized programs. From birthdays and anniversaries to scandals and controversies, every day this column celebrates the soap opera in American culture.
On this date in...
1967: On Dark Shadows, Julia (Grayson Hall) felt guilty about telling Barnabas (Jonathan Frid) to bite Vicky. She instead offered to sacrifice herself to restore Barnabas's appearance. Though touched, he declined, noting that he needed her to continue as his doctor. In the meantime, Carolyn (Nancy Barrett) decided -- over David's (David Henesy) protests...
1988: Gl's Rusty shot Will and tried to save Mindy.
1995: Loving's Gwyneth was revealed as the Corinth Killer.
2009: As the World Turns' Brad Snyder died."The best prophet of the future is the past."
― Lord Byron
"Today in Soap Opera History" is a collection of the most memorable, interesting and influential events in the history of scripted, serialized programs. From birthdays and anniversaries to scandals and controversies, every day this column celebrates the soap opera in American culture.
On this date in...
1967: On Dark Shadows, Julia (Grayson Hall) felt guilty about telling Barnabas (Jonathan Frid) to bite Vicky. She instead offered to sacrifice herself to restore Barnabas's appearance. Though touched, he declined, noting that he needed her to continue as his doctor. In the meantime, Carolyn (Nancy Barrett) decided -- over David's (David Henesy) protests...
- 10/27/2018
- by Roger Newcomb
- We Love Soaps
1989: Atwt's Ellen was unhappy with her husband.
1989: Gl's Will fatally injured Rose.
1994: Gh's Bobbie and Tony said goodbye to B.J.
2012: Days' Lucas and Sami reacted to Will coming out."All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity that the dry, shrivelled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut."
― Anne Brontë in "Agnes Grey"
"Today in Soap Opera History" is a collection of the most memorable, interesting and influential events in the history of scripted, serialized programs. From birthdays and anniversaries to scandals and controversies, every day this column celebrates the soap opera in American culture.
On this date in...
1967: On Days of our Lives, Tom (Macdonald Carey) told Susan (Denise Alexander) that Dickie didn't have any fractures but had not regained consciousness.
1979: On Another World,...
1989: Gl's Will fatally injured Rose.
1994: Gh's Bobbie and Tony said goodbye to B.J.
2012: Days' Lucas and Sami reacted to Will coming out."All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity that the dry, shrivelled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut."
― Anne Brontë in "Agnes Grey"
"Today in Soap Opera History" is a collection of the most memorable, interesting and influential events in the history of scripted, serialized programs. From birthdays and anniversaries to scandals and controversies, every day this column celebrates the soap opera in American culture.
On this date in...
1967: On Days of our Lives, Tom (Macdonald Carey) told Susan (Denise Alexander) that Dickie didn't have any fractures but had not regained consciousness.
1979: On Another World,...
- 5/16/2018
- by Roger Newcomb
- We Love Soaps
I tell you it’s rough out there on Frisco Bay, especially when you say the word ‘Frisco’ within earshot of a proud San Francisco native. This Alan Ladd racketeering tale could have been written twenty years earlier, but it has Warner Color and the early, extra-wide iteration of the new movie attraction CinemaScope.
Hell on Frisco Bay
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1955 / Color / 2:55 widescreen Academy / 98 min. / Street Date , 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring: Alan Ladd, Edward G. Robinson, Joanne Dru, William Demarest, Paul Stewart, Perry Lopez, Fay Wray, Nestor Paiva, Willis Bouchey, Anthony Caruso, Tina Carver, Rod(ney) Taylor, Jayne Mansfield, Mae Marsh, Tito Vuolo.
Cinematography: John F. Seitz
Film Editor: Folmar Blangsted
Stunts: Paul Baxley
Original Music: Max Steiner
Written by Martin Rackin, Sydney Boehm from a book by William P. McGivern
Produced by George C. Berttholon, Alan Ladd
Directed by Frank Tuttle
Alan Ladd had always been...
Hell on Frisco Bay
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1955 / Color / 2:55 widescreen Academy / 98 min. / Street Date , 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring: Alan Ladd, Edward G. Robinson, Joanne Dru, William Demarest, Paul Stewart, Perry Lopez, Fay Wray, Nestor Paiva, Willis Bouchey, Anthony Caruso, Tina Carver, Rod(ney) Taylor, Jayne Mansfield, Mae Marsh, Tito Vuolo.
Cinematography: John F. Seitz
Film Editor: Folmar Blangsted
Stunts: Paul Baxley
Original Music: Max Steiner
Written by Martin Rackin, Sydney Boehm from a book by William P. McGivern
Produced by George C. Berttholon, Alan Ladd
Directed by Frank Tuttle
Alan Ladd had always been...
- 10/21/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
'To Each His Own' movie with Olivia de Havilland and John Lund 'To Each His Own' movie review: Best Actress Oscar winner Olivia de Havilland stars in Mother Love tearjerker Olivia de Havilland, who had starred in the 1941 melodrama Hold Back the Dawn, returns to the wartime milieu in To Each His Own (1946), once again under the direction of Mitchell Leisen, who guides the proceedings with his characteristic sincerity while cleverly skirting the Production Code's restrictive guidelines. In To Each His Own, de Havilland plays Jody Norris, a small-town woman who falls quickly in love – much like her character in Hold Back the Dawn – but this time during World War I, when Jody's brief liaison with daredevil flying ace Captain Cosgrove (John Lund) results in an out-of-wedlock child. When Cosgrove is killed in battle, the young mother anonymously gives up her baby to a childless couple in her hometown, remaining...
- 5/7/2015
- by Doug Johnson
- Alt Film Guide
Getting its North American premiere at the New York Film Festival, Asia Argento’s Misunderstood is ostensibly about a nine-year-old girl’s difficult childhood brought on by the wildly inappropriate parenting skills of a pair of narcissistic celebrities and/or bohemian artists. That being said, its depiction of a childhood devoid of authority is often so playfully strange that it seems a celebration of anarchy more than a lament.
The father (Gabriel Garko) is a popular action movie star who sports sunglasses and bleach-blonde frosted tips, smokes pot in front of his kids, and showers his other daughter—a busty teen who seems always on the verge of exploding out of her all-pink outfit in her all-pink bedroom—with almost incestuous affection. The mother (Charlotte Gainsbourg), meanwhile, disappears for weeks at a time on erotic adventures, brings home men who talk about “pussy” in front of the kids, and makes...
The father (Gabriel Garko) is a popular action movie star who sports sunglasses and bleach-blonde frosted tips, smokes pot in front of his kids, and showers his other daughter—a busty teen who seems always on the verge of exploding out of her all-pink outfit in her all-pink bedroom—with almost incestuous affection. The mother (Charlotte Gainsbourg), meanwhile, disappears for weeks at a time on erotic adventures, brings home men who talk about “pussy” in front of the kids, and makes...
- 9/26/2014
- by Doug Dibbern
- MUBI
Honorary Award: Gloria Swanson, Rita Hayworth among dozens of women bypassed by the Academy (photo: Honorary Award non-winner Gloria Swanson in 'Sunset Blvd.') (See previous post: "Honorary Oscars: Doris Day, Danielle Darrieux Snubbed.") Part three of this four-part article about the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Honorary Award bypassing women basically consists of a long, long — and for the most part quite prestigious — list of deceased women who, some way or other, left their mark on the film world. Some of the names found below are still well known; others were huge in their day, but are now all but forgotten. Yet, just because most people (and the media) suffer from long-term — and even medium-term — memory loss, that doesn't mean these women were any less deserving of an Honorary Oscar. So, among the distinguished female film professionals in Hollywood and elsewhere who have passed away without...
- 9/4/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Film's golden era was tarnished by appeasement
Nazi Germany loved movies, and their leader was, as in so much else, fanatical about them. In his private cinema at the Reich Chancellery Hitler watched a movie every night, then gave his invited guests the benefit of his opinion on it. He loved Laurel and Hardy, for instance, noting how their comedy Block-Heads contained "a lot of very nice ideas and clever jokes". Yet he regarded movies as something more than entertainment; he saw in their power to seduce and bewitch a vital instrument of persuasion. His propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, saw it, too. After watching It Happened One Night, he wrote in his diary: "A funny, lively American film from which we can learn a lot. The Americans are so natural. Far superior to us."
If this eye-opening study of Hollywood and the Nazi elite is to be believed, that superiority was purely a technical one.
Nazi Germany loved movies, and their leader was, as in so much else, fanatical about them. In his private cinema at the Reich Chancellery Hitler watched a movie every night, then gave his invited guests the benefit of his opinion on it. He loved Laurel and Hardy, for instance, noting how their comedy Block-Heads contained "a lot of very nice ideas and clever jokes". Yet he regarded movies as something more than entertainment; he saw in their power to seduce and bewitch a vital instrument of persuasion. His propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, saw it, too. After watching It Happened One Night, he wrote in his diary: "A funny, lively American film from which we can learn a lot. The Americans are so natural. Far superior to us."
If this eye-opening study of Hollywood and the Nazi elite is to be believed, that superiority was purely a technical one.
- 10/16/2013
- by Anthony Quinn
- The Guardian - Film News
During the early 1940′s the Hollywood studio system was at its peak. At Warner Brothers, studio head Jack Warner and as his right hand man, executive in charge of production, Hal B. Wallis confidently stood shoulder to shoulder with the other major studios. Back then Hollywood would churn out at least one movie per week from each studio. It was like a factory, pumping out movies on a production line. Casablanca was like any other film at the time, made for a cheap buck as opposed to any strong artistic merit. Funny then that it has since gone on to become one of the most beloved films of all time.
Casablanca was just another place on the map until Hal Wallis got his hands on a play entitled ‘Everybody Comes To Rick’s‘. Based upon the travels of playwrights Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, the play was unproduced at the...
Casablanca was just another place on the map until Hal Wallis got his hands on a play entitled ‘Everybody Comes To Rick’s‘. Based upon the travels of playwrights Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, the play was unproduced at the...
- 2/10/2012
- by Tom Ryan
- Obsessed with Film
Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling have been mentioned as potential Oscar contenders for their performances as carefree lovers-turned-unhappily-married couple in Derek Cianfrance's Blue Valentine, which The Weinstein Company will be releasing in the United States on Dec. 31. But members of the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings (i.e., censorship) board, whose job is to perpetuate the ludicrousness of the Hays Office and the Breen Office (named after infamous censors Will Hays and Joseph Breen) don't care about performances. They care about how many times the word "fuck" is used in a film. They care even more if the act of fucking is used in a film. The act is present to some degree or other in Blue Valentine; hence the MPAA's decision to punch the film with the dreaded Nc-17 rating, reports Mike Fleming at Deadline.com. Those who have seen the movie at Sundance, Cannes, and/or Toronto are flabbergasted,...
- 10/9/2010
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Historians still disagree on what killed Classical Hollywood Cinema. Academics with an analytical bent tend to write about the Paramount Decree of 1948, postwar suburbanization, the increasing popularity of television, and the new economic independence of stars who began to package their own deals to shop around to the studios. But, as with Toltec creation myths or my aunt’s disquisitions on her recipe for California Taco Supreme*, sometimes it is the most poetically irrational explanations that have the most satisfying relationship to the truth. I had one of those illogical revelations myself the other day, entranced by Jimmy Stewart’s rage near the end of Anthony Mann’s The Naked Spur. He’s the one who did it, I realized: it was Jimmy Stewart who killed Hollywood.
I used to point to four movies in particular as marking the symbolic death of old Hollywood. I liked Peter Bogdanovich’s description...
I used to point to four movies in particular as marking the symbolic death of old Hollywood. I liked Peter Bogdanovich’s description...
- 7/12/2010
- MUBI
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