Oscar is 95 this year, meaning he’s been around longer than most of us. And many people assume the look of the award, his nickname and the structure of the annual voting … just kinda happened.
However, Bruce Davis details the thought and innovations behind these things in his authoritative new book, “The Academy and the Award: The Coming of Age of Oscar and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences” (Brandeis University Press).
Davis, who was AMPAS’ executive director for 20 years, dispels a lot of Oscar lore. No, neither Bette Davis nor the Academy’s Margaret Herrick came up with the nickname Oscar. No, Mexican actor Emilio Fernandez was not the model. Cedric Gibbons didn’t sketch out the design on the tablecloth at the Biltmore.
Davis also points out, “Contrary to widespread opinion, the Academy’s knight is neither naked nor bald.” Oscar is wearing a thong-like strap and has close-cropped hair.
However, Bruce Davis details the thought and innovations behind these things in his authoritative new book, “The Academy and the Award: The Coming of Age of Oscar and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences” (Brandeis University Press).
Davis, who was AMPAS’ executive director for 20 years, dispels a lot of Oscar lore. No, neither Bette Davis nor the Academy’s Margaret Herrick came up with the nickname Oscar. No, Mexican actor Emilio Fernandez was not the model. Cedric Gibbons didn’t sketch out the design on the tablecloth at the Biltmore.
Davis also points out, “Contrary to widespread opinion, the Academy’s knight is neither naked nor bald.” Oscar is wearing a thong-like strap and has close-cropped hair.
- 2/11/2023
- by Tim Gray
- Variety Film + TV
Click here to read the full article.
Exactly 100 years ago — on Oct. 18, 1922 — Hollywood unrolled what has been cited as the inaugural modern movie premiere and red carpet proceeding. At the opening night of the Egyptian Theatre, heralding the silent film Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood, showman Sid Grauman set out to conjure movie magic before the reel ever started rolling.
The red carpet cut through the theater’s 150-by-45-foot forecourt. The Hollywood Daily Citizen gushed that “the flood-lights of filmdom turned the night into brilliance brighter than noonday.…” Vehicles stretched along the street. Onlookers lined the walkway. Camera bulbs flashed. And suddenly Tinseltown had a sparkly new tool in its arsenal of pageantry.
“Everybody from starland was there,” The Los Angeles Times proclaimed. Around 2,000 attendees — including “the greatest of the producers, scenarists, directors, actors, and screen technicians,” per the Daily Citizen — filled the house. Beforehand, the Times stated that Arthur P.
Exactly 100 years ago — on Oct. 18, 1922 — Hollywood unrolled what has been cited as the inaugural modern movie premiere and red carpet proceeding. At the opening night of the Egyptian Theatre, heralding the silent film Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood, showman Sid Grauman set out to conjure movie magic before the reel ever started rolling.
The red carpet cut through the theater’s 150-by-45-foot forecourt. The Hollywood Daily Citizen gushed that “the flood-lights of filmdom turned the night into brilliance brighter than noonday.…” Vehicles stretched along the street. Onlookers lined the walkway. Camera bulbs flashed. And suddenly Tinseltown had a sparkly new tool in its arsenal of pageantry.
“Everybody from starland was there,” The Los Angeles Times proclaimed. Around 2,000 attendees — including “the greatest of the producers, scenarists, directors, actors, and screen technicians,” per the Daily Citizen — filled the house. Beforehand, the Times stated that Arthur P.
- 10/18/2022
- by Emily Zauzmer
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
One of the most successful remakes in Hollywood history, William Wyler’s eye-popping take on Fred Niblo’s 1925 spectacle Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (itself a remake of a 1907 short version) won 11 Oscars. The climactic chariot race ranks among the greatest action sequences in movie history. That’s Les Tremayne extolling the high-minded hyperbole on the soundtrack.
The post Ben-Hur appeared first on Trailers From Hell.
The post Ben-Hur appeared first on Trailers From Hell.
- 3/29/2021
- by TFH Team
- Trailers from Hell
One of the most successful remakes in Hollywood history, William Wyler’s eye-popping take on Fred Niblo’s 1925 spectacle Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (itself a remake of a 1907 short version) won 11 Oscars. The climactic chariot race ranks among the greatest action sequences in movie history. That’s Les Tremayne extolling the high-minded hyperbole on the soundtrack.
The post Ben-Hur appeared first on Trailers From Hell.
The post Ben-Hur appeared first on Trailers From Hell.
- 5/1/2019
- by TFH Team
- Trailers from Hell
University Press of Kentucky
464 pages
Published 15 December 2017
Isdn: 978-0-8131-7425-9
Review By Adrian Smith
Born in 1896, as a teenager Barbara La Marr, then Reatha Watson, lead something of an adventurous life. Her father worked in the newspaper business, and the family moved home constantly, almost inevitably contributing towards the turbulence and seeming inability to settle down that plagued her life. At the age of sixteen, now living in California, her elder sister and her husband kidnapped Reatha, causing a minor scandal, with some accounts stating that Reatha had helped plot the kidnaping herself in a desire to flee her oppressive parents. Reatha was already an incredibly luminous and attractive young woman, and she was regularly spotted in the nightclubs of Los Angeles dancing, drinking, and generally behaving in such a way that soon brought the wrong kind of attention. For her own protection a court declared that she...
464 pages
Published 15 December 2017
Isdn: 978-0-8131-7425-9
Review By Adrian Smith
Born in 1896, as a teenager Barbara La Marr, then Reatha Watson, lead something of an adventurous life. Her father worked in the newspaper business, and the family moved home constantly, almost inevitably contributing towards the turbulence and seeming inability to settle down that plagued her life. At the age of sixteen, now living in California, her elder sister and her husband kidnapped Reatha, causing a minor scandal, with some accounts stating that Reatha had helped plot the kidnaping herself in a desire to flee her oppressive parents. Reatha was already an incredibly luminous and attractive young woman, and she was regularly spotted in the nightclubs of Los Angeles dancing, drinking, and generally behaving in such a way that soon brought the wrong kind of attention. For her own protection a court declared that she...
- 8/1/2018
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Ricardo Cortez: Although never as big a star as fellow 1920s screen heartthrobs Rudolph Valentino, Ramon Novarro, and John Gilbert, Cortez had a long – and, to some extent, prestigious – film career, appearing in nearly 100 movies between 1923 and 1950. Among his directors: Allan Dwan, Cecil B. DeMille, D.W. Griffith, James Cruze, Alexander Korda, Herbert Brenon, Roy Del Ruth, Frank Lloyd, Gregory La Cava, William A. Wellman, Alexander Hall, Lloyd Bacon, Tay Garnett, Archie Mayo, Raoul Walsh, Frank Capra, Walter Lang, Michael Curtiz, and John Ford. See previous post: “Remembering Ricardo Cortez: Hollywood's Silent “Latin Lover” & Star of Original 'The Maltese Falcon'.” First of all, why Ricardo Cortez? Since I began writing about classic movies and vintage filmmakers roughly 30 years ago, people have always been curious why I choose particular subjects. It sounds kind of corny, but I have always wanted to do original work and perhaps make a minor contribution to film history at the...
- 7/7/2017
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
'The Doll' with Ossi Oswalda and Hermann Thimig: Early Ernst Lubitsch satirical fantasy starring 'the German Mary Pickford' has similar premise to that of the 1925 Buster Keaton comedy 'Seven Chances.' 'The Doll': San Francisco Silent Film Festival presented fast-paced Ernst Lubitsch comedy starring the German Mary Pickford – Ossi Oswalda Directed by Ernst Lubitsch (So This Is Paris, The Wedding March), the 2017 San Francisco Silent Film Festival presentation The Doll / Die Puppe (1919) has one of the most amusing mise-en-scènes ever recorded. The set is created by cut-out figures that gradually come to life; then even more cleverly, they commence the fast-paced action. It all begins when a shy, confirmed bachelor, Lancelot (Hermann Thimig), is ordered by his rich uncle (Max Kronert), the Baron von Chanterelle, to marry for a large sum of money. As to be expected, mayhem ensues. Lancelot is forced to flee from the hordes of eligible maidens, eventually...
- 6/28/2017
- by Danny Fortune
- Alt Film Guide
Considering everything that's been happening on the planet in the last several months, you'd have thought we're already in November or December – of 2117. But no. It's only June. 2017. And in some parts of the world, that's the month of brides, fathers, graduates, gays, and climate change denial. Beginning this evening, Thursday, June 1, Turner Classic Movies will be focusing on one of these June groups: Lgbt people, specifically those in the American film industry. Following the presentation of about 10 movies featuring Frank Morgan, who would have turned 127 years old today, TCM will set its cinematic sights on the likes of William Haines, James Whale, George Cukor, Mitchell Leisen, Dorothy Arzner, Patsy Kelly, and Ramon Novarro. In addition to, whether or not intentionally, Claudette Colbert, Colin Clive, Katharine Hepburn, Douglass Montgomery (a.k.a. Kent Douglass), Marjorie Main, and Billie Burke, among others. But this is ridiculous! Why should TCM present a...
- 6/2/2017
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
The good news is that the story of Ben-Hur is so rock solid that not even the director of “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” can screw it up completely. The sixth feature-length film or miniseries to be adapted from Lew Wallace’s 1880 novel, “Ben-Hur: A Tale of The Christ,” Timur Bekmambetov’s take on the religious epic inevitably lacks the grandeur of Fred Niblo’s 1925 silent or the girth of William Wyler’s 1959 Oscar-hoarding classic. After all, this is 2016 (more specifically, the summer of 2016), a time when movies about Jesus are pitched only to the converted, and blockbusters can only be longer than 120 minutes if they end with two iconic superheroes fighting each other to a stalemate.
But if this new “Ben-Hur” was only provided with a fraction of the potential that’s been afforded to its predecessors, it sometimes finds the strength to reach out and scrape against its frustratingly low ceiling.
But if this new “Ben-Hur” was only provided with a fraction of the potential that’s been afforded to its predecessors, it sometimes finds the strength to reach out and scrape against its frustratingly low ceiling.
- 8/17/2016
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
This retelling of the classic tale, from the director of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, is unafraid to make wholesale changes, and all the better for it
They finally got the roof fixed.
In every previous adaptation of General Lew Wallace’s wildly successful 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, the instigating event stems from Judah Ben-Hur, the Jewish nobleman, accidentally knocking some stray tiles on to the heads of Roman bigshots as they enter Jerusalem. In 1907 (the 15-minute version), 1926 (Fred Niblo’s luxe and still very watchable silent), 1959 (the enormous Charlton Heston classic), 2003 (an animated version featuring Heston’s voice) and 2010 (a TV miniseries) tiles rained from above, shattering the friendship between Judah and his boyhood chum, the striving Roman tribune Messala. It’s not a stretch to call the poorly manufactured shingles at the Casa de Hur a key prop in cinema history – if not quite Charles Foster...
They finally got the roof fixed.
In every previous adaptation of General Lew Wallace’s wildly successful 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, the instigating event stems from Judah Ben-Hur, the Jewish nobleman, accidentally knocking some stray tiles on to the heads of Roman bigshots as they enter Jerusalem. In 1907 (the 15-minute version), 1926 (Fred Niblo’s luxe and still very watchable silent), 1959 (the enormous Charlton Heston classic), 2003 (an animated version featuring Heston’s voice) and 2010 (a TV miniseries) tiles rained from above, shattering the friendship between Judah and his boyhood chum, the striving Roman tribune Messala. It’s not a stretch to call the poorly manufactured shingles at the Casa de Hur a key prop in cinema history – if not quite Charles Foster...
- 8/17/2016
- by Jordan Hoffman
- The Guardian - Film News
'Ben-Hur' 2016 with Jack Huston: Chariot race to the death. 'Ben-Hur' 2016 trailer: 'Gladiator' meets 'Fast Seven' meets 'Star Wars' meets… Paramount Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer have released the trailer for their 2016 Ben-Hur remake (or reboot or readaptation) – a.k.a. Fast and Furious A.D., as one wag called it in an online comment. Instead of grandiose spectacle featuring at its core a “human” story with Christian overtones, this chariot-and-sandals epic is being sold as Gladiator meets Fast Seven meets Spartacus: Blood and Sand meets Star Wars – with Morgan Freeman's Sheik Ilderim as the Roman Empire's dreadlocked version of Alec Guinness' Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi. Say what you will, the trailer-makers sure know their target audience. And that's not the same crowd that would go check out what's usually referred to in the U.S. media as “faith” (i.e., Christian) movies. One assumes that particular audience segment will be getting...
- 3/18/2016
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Ramon Novarro: 'Ben-Hur' 1925 star. 'Ben-Hur' on TCM: Ramon Novarro in most satisfying version of the semi-biblical epic Christmas 2015 is just around the corner. That's surely the reason Turner Classic Movies presented Fred Niblo's Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ last night, Dec. 20, '15, featuring Carl Davis' magnificent score. Starring Ramon Novarro, the 1925 version of Ben-Hur became not only the most expensive movie production,[1] but also the biggest worldwide box office hit up to that time.[2] Equally important, that was probably the first instance when the international market came to the rescue of a Hollywood mega-production,[3] saving not only Ben-Hur from a fate worse than getting trampled by a runaway chariot, but also the newly formed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which could have been financially strangled at birth had the epic based on Gen. Lew Wallace's bestseller been a commercial bomb. The convoluted making of 'Ben-Hur,' as described...
- 12/21/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Since 1989, the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress has been accomplishing the important task of preserving films that “represent important cultural, artistic and historic achievements in filmmaking.” From films way back in 1897 all the way up to 2004, they’ve now reached 675 films that celebrate our heritage and encapsulate our film history.
Today they’ve unveiled their 2015 list, which includes classics such as Douglas Sirk‘s melodrama Imitation of Life, Hal Ashby‘s Being There, and John Frankenheimer‘s Seconds. Perhaps the most popular picks, The Shawshank Redemption, Ghostbusters, Top Gun, and L.A. Confidential were also added. Check out the full list below.
Being There (1979)
Chance, a simple-minded gardener (Peter Sellers) whose only contact with the outside world is through television, becomes the toast of the town following a series of misunderstandings. Forced outside his protected environment by the death of his wealthy boss, Chance subsumes his late employer’s persona,...
Today they’ve unveiled their 2015 list, which includes classics such as Douglas Sirk‘s melodrama Imitation of Life, Hal Ashby‘s Being There, and John Frankenheimer‘s Seconds. Perhaps the most popular picks, The Shawshank Redemption, Ghostbusters, Top Gun, and L.A. Confidential were also added. Check out the full list below.
Being There (1979)
Chance, a simple-minded gardener (Peter Sellers) whose only contact with the outside world is through television, becomes the toast of the town following a series of misunderstandings. Forced outside his protected environment by the death of his wealthy boss, Chance subsumes his late employer’s persona,...
- 12/16/2015
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Constance Cummings: Actress in minor Hollywood movies became major London stage star. Constance Cummings: Actress went from Harold Lloyd and Frank Capra to Noël Coward and Eugene O'Neill Actress Constance Cummings, whose career spanned more than six decades on stage, in films, and on television in both the U.S. and the U.K., died ten years ago on Nov. 23. Unlike other Broadway imports such as Ann Harding, Katharine Hepburn, Miriam Hopkins, and Claudette Colbert, the pretty, elegant Cummings – who could have been turned into a less edgy Constance Bennett had she landed at Rko or Paramount instead of Columbia – never became a Hollywood star. In fact, her most acclaimed work, whether in films or – more frequently – on stage, was almost invariably found in British productions. That's most likely why the name Constance Cummings – despite the DVD availability of several of her best-received performances – is all but forgotten.
- 11/4/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Greta Garbo movie 'The Kiss.' Greta Garbo movies on TCM Greta Garbo, a rarity among silent era movie stars, is Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” performer today, Aug. 26, '15. Now, why would Garbo be considered a silent era rarity? Well, certainly not because she easily made the transition to sound, remaining a major star for another decade. Think Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, William Powell, Fay Wray, Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery, John Barrymore, Warner Baxter, Janet Gaynor, Constance Bennett, etc. And so much for all the stories about actors with foreign accents being unable to maintain their Hollywood stardom following the advent of sound motion pictures. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer star, Garbo was no major exception to the supposed rule. Mexican Ramon Novarro, another MGM star, also made an easy transition to sound, and so did fellow Mexicans Lupe Velez and Dolores del Rio, in addition to the very British...
- 8/27/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
A long time ago, sometime around 1912, a director by the name of D.W. Griffith packed up his filmmaking wares and took his crew, including favored cinematographer Billy Bitzer and star Mae Marsh, across the water to a relatively mysterious island off the Southern California coast to shoot a short film. The project, Man’s Genesis, subtitled A Psychological Comedy Founded upon the Darwinian Theory of the Evolution of Man (Is that Woody Allen I hear whimpering with envy?), isn’t one for which Griffith is well remembered, in the hearts of either academics or those given to silent-era nostalgia. (One comment on IMDb suggests that no one would ever mistake Griffith’s simple tale of a landmark of human development—man discovers his ability to craft and use tools in order to achieve a specific goal-- for “a serious work of speculative anthropology” and wonders “what the director and his...
- 7/30/2015
- by Dennis Cozzalio
- Trailers from Hell
African-American film 'Bert Williams: Lime Kiln Club Field Day.' With Williams and Odessa Warren Grey.* Rare, early 20th-century African-American film among San Francisco Silent Film Festival highlights Directed by Edwin Middleton and T. Hayes Hunter, the Biograph Company's Lime Kiln Club Field Day (1913) was the film I most looked forward to at the 2015 edition of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. One hundred years old, unfinished, and destined to be scrapped and tossed into the dust bin, it rose from the ashes. Starring entertainer Bert Williams – whose film appearances have virtually disappeared, but whose legacy lives on – Lime Kiln Club Field Day has become a rare example of African-American life in the first years of the 20th century. In the introduction to the film, the audience was treated to a treasure trove of Black memorabilia: sheet music, stills, promotional material, and newspaper clippings that survive. Details of the...
- 6/16/2015
- by Danny Fortune
- Alt Film Guide
The best part of the DVD-on-demand business (or Mod, as the studios call it) is that Warner Bros., Sony, and 20th Century Fox are unearthing rare titles from their vaults. Many have never been on home video in any form, and some haven’t ever had television exposure. My latest “discovery” is a 1934 Columbia title called Among the Missing, directed by Albert S. Rogell and written by Herbert Asbury and Fred Niblo, Jr., from a story by Florence Wagner. It stars Henrietta Crosman, Richard Cromwell, Billie Seward, and Arthur Hohl—not exactly an all-star lineup, unless you’ve seen Crosman’s memorable performance in John Ford’s Pilgrimage. Crosman was a veteran stage actress who made a...
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- 1/20/2015
- by Leonard Maltin
- Leonard Maltin's Movie Crazy
This story first appeared in the Dec. 12 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Rupert Murdoch has found a buyer for his Angelo Drive estate in the hills above Beverly Hills: his son James Murdoch. According to sources, the 21st Century Fox co-coo has taken ownership of the historic property, designed by Wallace Neff and built in 1926 for silent-film director Fred Niblo and actress Enid Bennett. According to sources, 41-year-old James already has commissioned contractors and an interior designer for a minor redo, which will maintain the historic relevance of the sprawling property (once listed
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- 12/6/2014
- by Chris Gardner
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Howard Hughes movies (photo: Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes in 'The Aviator') Turner Classic Movies will be showing the Howard Hughes-produced, John Farrow-directed, Baja California-set gangster drama His Kind of Woman, starring Robert Mitchum, Hughes discovery Jane Russell, and Vincent Price, at 3 a.m. Pt / 6 a.m. Et on Saturday, November 8, 2014. Hughes produced a couple of dozen movies. (More on that below.) But what about "Howard Hughes movies"? Or rather, movies -- whether big-screen or made-for-television efforts -- featuring the visionary, eccentric, hypochondriac, compulsive-obsessive, all-American billionaire as a character? Besides Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays a dashing if somewhat unbalanced Hughes in Martin Scorsese's 2004 Best Picture Academy Award-nominated The Aviator, other actors who have played Howard Hughes on film include the following: Tommy Lee Jones in William A. Graham's television movie The Amazing Howard Hughes (1977), with Lee Purcell as silent film star Billie Dove, Tovah Feldshuh as Katharine Hepburn,...
- 11/6/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Jack Huston cast in 'Ben-Hur' remake? 'Boardwalk Empire' actor to follow in the footsteps of Ramon Novarro and Charlton Heston Jack Huston, best known for playing World War I veteran-turned-bootlegger-cum-assassin Richard Harrow in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, may star in the latest Ben-Hur "remake," to be jointly produced by Paramount and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. I have "remake" between quotes because officially this fourth big-screen version of the semi-biblical epic (more on that below) isn't an actual remake of either the multiple Oscar-winning 1959 Ben-Hur or its 1925 predecessor, but a direct adaptation of former Civil War general Lew Wallace's 1880 bestselling novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, which happens to be conveniently in the public domain. Timur Bekmambetov, whose credits include the Angelina Jolie-James McAvoy thriller Wanted and the supernatural cult classic Night Watch, has been attached as director of what is in fact A Tale...
- 9/17/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Ramon Novarro and Greta Garbo in ‘Mata Hari’: The wrath of the censors (See previous post: "Ramon Novarro in One of the Best Silent Movies.") George Fitzmaurice’s romantic spy melodrama Mata Hari (1931) was well received by critics and enthusiastically embraced by moviegoers. The Greta Garbo / Ramon Novarro combo — the first time Novarro took second billing since becoming a star — turned Mata Hari into a major worldwide blockbuster, with $2.22 million in worldwide rentals. The film became Garbo’s biggest international success to date, and Novarro’s highest-grossing picture after Ben-Hur. (Photo: Ramon Novarro and Greta Garbo in Mata Hari.) Among MGM’s 1932 releases — Mata Hari opened on December 31, 1931 — only W.S. Van Dyke’s Tarzan, the Ape Man, featuring Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan, and Edmund Goulding’s all-star Best Picture Academy Award winner Grand Hotel (also with Garbo, in addition to Joan Crawford, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, and...
- 8/9/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Ramon Novarro is Ben-Hur: The Naked and Famous in first big-budget Hollywood movie saved by the international market (See previous post: "Ramon Novarro: Silent Movie Star.") Turner Classic Movies’ Ramon Novarro Day continues with The Son-Daughter (1933), on TCM right now. Both Novarro and Helen Hayes play Chinese characters in San Francisco’s Chinatown — in the sort of story that had worked back in 1919, when D.W. Griffith made Broken Blossoms with Lillian Gish and Richard Barthelmess. By 1933, however, the drab-looking, slow-moving The Son-Daughter felt all wrong. (Photo: Naked Ramon Novarro in Ben-Hur.) Directed by the renowned Clarence Brown (who guided Greta Garbo in some of her biggest hits), The Son-Daughter turned out to be a well-intentioned mess, eventually bombing at the box office. And that goes to show that Louis B. Mayer and/or Irving G. Thalberg didn’t always know what the hell they were doing with their stars and properties.
- 8/9/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Ramon Novarro: Silent movie star proves he can talk and sing (See previous post: "Ramon Novarro: Mexican-Born Actor Was First Latin American Hollywood Superstar.") On Ramon Novarro Day, Turner Classic Movies’ first Novarro movie is Rex Ingram’s The Prisoner of Zenda (1922), a stately version of Edward Rose’s play, itself based on Anthony Hope’s 1897 novel: in the Central European kingdom of Ruritania, a traveling Englishman takes the place of the kidnapped local king-to-be-crowned. A pre-Judge Hardy Lewis Stone has the double role, while Novarro plays the scheming Rupert of Hentzau. (Photo: Ramon Novarro ca. 1922.) Despite his stage training, Stone is as interesting to watch as a beach pebble; Novarro, for his part, has a good time hamming it up in his first major break — courtesy of director Rex Ingram, then looking for a replacement for Rudolph Valentino, with whom he’d had a serious falling out...
- 8/8/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Paul Henreid: From Eleanor Parker to ‘The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ (photo: Paul Henreid and Eleanor Parker in ‘Between Two Worlds’) Paul Henreid returns this evening, as Turner Classic Movies’ Star of the Month of July 2013. In Of Human Bondage (1946), he stars in the old Leslie Howard role: a clubfooted medical student who falls for a ruthless waitress (Eleanor Parker, in the old Bette Davis role). Next on TCM, Henreid and Eleanor Parker are reunited in Between Two Worlds (1944), in which passengers aboard an ocean liner wonder where they are and where the hell (or heaven or purgatory) they’re going. Hollywood Canteen (1944) is a near-plotless, all-star showcase for Warner Bros.’ talent, a World War II morale-boosting follow-up to that studio’s Thank Your Lucky Stars, released the previous year. Last of the Buccaneers (1950) and Pirates of Tripoli (1955) are B pirate movies. The former is an uninspired affair,...
- 7/24/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Ingmar Bergman Jean Dujardin, Meryl Streep, Christopher Plummer, Michel Hazanavicius, Octavia Spencer, and surely Harvey Weinstein are thrilled they and/or their movies won Academy Awards last night at Hollywood & Highland. Not every Oscar nominee/winner, however, has felt that way. The Criterion Collection has posted (via dizzydentfilms) a May 12, 1960, letter in which Ingmar Bergman scolded the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for nominating his 1957 drama Wild Strawberries for a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award in 1960. (Wild Strawberries was shown in Los Angeles in 1959.) Here's the text of Bergman's letter, which was displayed at the 2010 Academy exhibit "Ingmar Bergman: Truth and Lies": As Smultronstället (Wild Strawberries) didn't compete for "Oscar" I think it is wrong to nominate the picture and therefor [sic] I want to return the "Certificate Of Nomination". I have found that the "Oscar" nomination is one for the motion picture art humiliating institution and...
- 2/27/2012
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Movie Star Ramon Novarro Brutally Killed Halloween Eve 1968 Paul Ferguson, in a letter he wrote me at the time I was working on Beyond Paradise, blamed his Catholic background for Ramon Novarro's death: "When [Novarro] kissed me, I reacted like a Catholic, what they call homosexual panic. Some old guy in the desert says, 'Kill homosexuals.' It's inbred. . . . I was too drunk to be civilized. Whatever my most primitive moral standings were, I reacted. It had nothing to do with Novarro, nothing to do with his being homosexual. It all had to do with how I saw myself. And the fact that my brother was there. And that he could see me in that homosexual act. It all had to do with my Catholic upbringing, with my five thousand years of Moses. And that's the only reason why this whole thing happened. Because that's what society teaches you. . . . I think after I hit Mr.
- 10/31/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Barbara Kent, a minor leading lady during the transition from silent to sound films, died October 13 in Palm Desert, in Southern California. A resident of the local Marrakesh Country Club, Kent was either 103 or 104. No cause of death was given. Barbara Kent was never a star. Not even close. In fact, most of her 35 movies were probably forgotten the week after their release. Paradoxically, Kent has become one of the most important performers of the silent era. No, not because she was Harold Lloyd's leading lady in his first talkie, Welcome Danger (1929). Or because of her career highlight: romancing Glen Tryon in Paul Fejos' naturalistic drama Lonesome (1928), frequently compared to F. W. Murnau's Sunrise. Barbara Kent has taken an importance incommensurate to her actual movie career because she was the very last individual to have had notable adult leads in American silent films. Everybody else, from Lillian Gish to Joan Crawford,...
- 10/21/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
A little over a week ago, Geoffrey Macnab prepped Independent readers for the arrival of Michel Hazanavicius's latest at the London Film Festival: "Rapturously received in Cannes, this is a classic tale of old Hollywood: an A Star is Born-style yarn about a slick movie star, George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), whose popularity begins to wane with the arrival of the talkies in the late 1920s, just as that of the Theda Bara-like It Girl Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo) rises. The Artist is a film of extraordinary visual zest, humor and pathos. It also happens to be French-made, black and white... and silent…. Valentin, the debonair and dashing protagonist of The Artist, is clearly modelled on Douglas Fairbanks. The irony of this is that Kevin Brownlow is currently trying to make a documentary about Fairbanks through his company Photoplay Productions, and no one will finance it. Contacted this week,...
- 10/17/2011
- MUBI
Blood And Sand (1922) Direction: Fred Niblo Cast: Rudolph Valentino, Lila Lee, Nita Naldi, Rosa Rosanova, Walter Long, Charles Belcher, Leo White, Rosita Marstini Screenplay: June Mathis; from Vicente Blasco Ibáñez's novel, and Tom Cushing's play Recommended Rudolph Valentino, Nita Naldi, Blood and Sand Bullfighting has never appealed to me, so I approached Fred Niblo's Blood and Sand with caution. Now that I've seen it, I am relieved that there was no actual footage of this hideous blood sport. Niblo's film version of Vicente Blasco Ibáñez's novel and Tom Cushing's play offers more reference to the practice than any actual details. Rudolph Valentino dominates [...]...
- 6/14/2011
- by Danny Fortune
- Alt Film Guide
Rudolph Valentino, Blood and Sand Hollywood Heritage will celebrate Rudolph Valentino's birthday on Wednesday, May 11. The event will include screenings of the abridged version of Blood and Sand (1922) and the short Rudolph Valentino and His 88 American Beauties; rare photographs and artifacts on display in the lobby of the Hollywood Heritage Museum; and the presence of Donna Hill, author of Rudolph Valentino, The Silent Idol: His Life in Photographs. In addition to Blood and Sand, directed by Fred Niblo (Ben-Hur) and co-starring Nita Naldi (photo) and Martha Mansfield, Valentino starred in a number of major hits of the 1920s, among them Rex Ingram's epoch-making The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Sheik, Beyond the Rocks, Monsieur Beaucaire, The Eagle, and Son of the Sheik. Born on May 6 in Castelanetta, Italy, Valentino died unexpectedly in 1926 at the age of 31. According to the Hollywood Heritage press release, in Rudolph Valentino, [...]...
- 4/1/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Rex Ingram directing Scaramouche (top); Henri Matisse, Rex Ingram (middle); Rex Ingram, the actor-director, with off-screen girlfriend Rosita Garcia in Baroud (bottom) Rex Ingram Part I In Beyond Paradise, I wrote that "Ingram's unquestionable talent was matched only by his arrogance, fiery temperament, and lack of respect for authority." Indeed, those qualities were his undoing. A couple of years after his falling out with June Mathis and Rudolph Valentino, Ingram was heartbroken when he was passed over for the job of directing Goldwyn Pictures' monumental Ben-Hur, which was to be shot in Italy under Mathis' supervision. After two more years had gone by, both Mathis and her chosen director, Charles Brabin, were fired from the out-of-control project. But instead of replacing Brabin with Ingram, the top brass at Metro-Goldwyn opted for the more malleable Fred Niblo. (Ironically, Ingram's own discovery, Ramon Novarro, landed the role of Judah Ben-Hur after leading...
- 3/19/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Peter O'Toole, Katharine Hepburn, The Lion in Winter Turner Classic Movies' Christmas daytime programming includes George Cukor's 1933 classic Little Women, the 1938 version of A Christmas Carol, and the tedious 1959 version of Ben-Hur. William Wyler was a great director, but this multi-Oscared epic pales in comparison to Fred Niblo's more concise, less pretentious, and (mercifully) dialogue-less 1925 version starring Ramon Novarro (who was eons better than Charlton Heston in the title role). Things get meatier on TCM in the evening as Oscar winner Katharine Hepburn spars with Oscar nominee Peter O'Toole in Anthony Harvey's New York Film Critics Circle winner The Lion in Winter (1968). That'll be followed by Mike Nichols' masterpiece, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), in which Oscar winners Elizabeth Taylor and Sandy Dennis, and Oscar nominees Richard Burton and George Segal laugh, cry, yell, and then yell some more in this brilliant adaptation of Edward Albee...
- 12/25/2010
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
As news breaks that MGM has risen out of bankruptcy, this writer would like to take a moment and remember when this studio first entered the news, with its formation being the result of a corporate merger on Wall Street over eighty years ago. Following this merge, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer would be the dominant motion picture studio in Hollywood, from the end of the silent film era through World War II.
The man behind the merger was Marcus Loew, the owner of a large theater chain known as Loew’s Theatres. Wanting to provide a steady supply of films for his theaters, he had purchased both Metro Pictures Corporation and Goldwyn Pictures. However, both of these companies lacked leadership, and Loew was unable to spare his longtime assistant, Nicholas Schenck, as he was needed in New York City to oversee the theater chain. The answer came to Loew when his visited the...
The man behind the merger was Marcus Loew, the owner of a large theater chain known as Loew’s Theatres. Wanting to provide a steady supply of films for his theaters, he had purchased both Metro Pictures Corporation and Goldwyn Pictures. However, both of these companies lacked leadership, and Loew was unable to spare his longtime assistant, Nicholas Schenck, as he was needed in New York City to oversee the theater chain. The answer came to Loew when his visited the...
- 12/21/2010
- by Kristen Coates
- The Film Stage
Mary Pickford in Maurice Tourneur's The Poor Little Rich Girl (top); Dustin Farnum in Cecil B. DeMille's The Squaw Man (bottom) The Birth of Hollywood, part II of the seven-part documentary Moguls & Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood, will be shown again tonight on Turner Classic Movies. In addition to the documentary narrated by Christopher Plummer, TCM will present several early silent films, including several seminal early Hollywood productions. Those include The Squaw Man (1914), Cecil B. DeMille's early Western that is "officially" the first movie made in Hollywood; the popular Mary Pickford vehicle The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917), directed by Maurice Tourneur (father of Cat People's Jacques Tourneur); and the Fred Niblo-directed Douglas Fairbanks costumer The Mark of Zorro (1920), which marked Fairbanks' departure from his usual modern all-American roles and his arrival in the world of period adventures and swordfighting. Also of interest is Reginald Barker...
- 11/11/2010
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Ramon Novarro, Enid Bennett, The Red Lily Early Mexican-born screen heartthrob Ramon Novarro is back on Turner Classic Movies this evening with a presentation of Fred Niblo's silent melodrama The Red Lily (1924). That will be followed by another Ismael Rodríguez effort, Las mujeres de mi general ("The Women of My General"), a 1951 starring Mexican icon Pedro Infante as a rebel general torn between two women, as TCM continues its celebration of 100 years of the start of the Mexican Revolution (which coincides with Hispanic Heritage Month). The Red Lily isn't one of Novarro's best silent films. Both in terms of style and plot, it's quite dated. In fact, it probably felt dated even back in 1924. Historically, The Red Lily is important merely as the the second time Novarro worked with director Fred Niblo, who would guide him the following year in the monumental Ben-Hur, and as Novarro's first effort [...]...
- 9/20/2010
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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