Journal

On The Set With Lena Horne

There are some days you just can’t forget. On March 13, 1993, I was given the opportunity to watch Lena Horne film her introductions for That’s Entertainment! III and interview her for Entertainment Tonight. The setting was the recording stage where Horne and all the MGM stars and musicians worked ...

Fans of Fan Magazines Gather

HAPPY 100th, NORMAN CORWIN

Norman Corwin is widely referred to as “the poet laureate of radio.” That won’t have much meaning to people who didn’t grow up in the 1940s or haven’t sought out his brilliant audio dramas. But if you love great writing…if you have a curiosity about the world around you… if you wonder why Americans ...

Cavalcade—And Noel Coward—Revisited

Recently, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences capped off its magnificent gallery exhibition honoring Noël Coward with three nights of screenings. The series kicked off a week ago Friday night with an evening hosted by that renaissance man Stephen Fry, who also happens to be a Vice President of the Noël Coward Society. A few days before the Academy event he interviewed Coward’s cinematic collaborator Ronald Neame, who turns 99 today. Their video conversation was delightful and revealing, with Neame recalling how at one point during the preparation of Brief Encounter he became fairly adept at writing “Noël Coward dialogue,” and was ...

Classic Film Fest: An Abundance Of Riches

With a triumphant screening of the newly-restored Fritz Lang epic Metropolis at Grauman’s Chinese Theater, the TCM Classic Film Festival came to a close last night. From the cheers of the crowd—not only for the film, and an extraordinary performance by the three-man Alloy Orchestra, but for TCM host...

Romantic Comedy—French Style

...And Old

After a long and productive day working on my book last Sunday I decided I had earned a reward, so my wife and I attended a double-feature at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, where the American Cinematheque and the Film Noir Foundation are unspooling their annual Film Noir festival. This is alw...

Binging on Movies—And Loving It

George O'Brien and a young Humphrey Bogart in A Holy Terror.

Great Films You Can't Find on DVD

With the long-awaited release of The African Queen on DVD this week, film buffs can check another prominent title off their want lists. That’s the good news…but there are still a surprising number of movies from every decade of the 20th century that aren’t commercially availabl...