END CREDITS

These are some final thoughts from 2014  TCM CLASSIC FILM FESTIVAL that we were very lucky to have attended with media credentials. TCM festival goers stay for the end credits of a film. TCM audiences will often applaud the star of the film name on screen and their first appearance in the story; especially if...

HOTTER THAN SIN

The next day at the festival was a hot as the weather yet still pretty cool for stuff to do. You have to make some choices in these things and sometime you guess wrong. Robert Osbourne gave us the anecdote that for years he had pushed the network to acquire the rights to a remake...

OVERTURE

I am beginning to feel a little like Merton Gill of the picture MAKE ME STAR  (1932) which featured an early role for Joan Blondell which was later remade as Merton of The Movies.  I did see this film a few days before leaving for this trip which made for interesting if not timely unplanned...

VISITING MARION

STARDUST AND SHADOWS is lucky enough to be writing this entry from Santa Monica near the famous pier. It is still a number of days before the TCM FESTIVAL begins yet I still have time in this neck of the wood to find some film history.   First up , took a walk to the...

ANNE NOW FOR OUR LESSON

I recently saw a Gary Cooper/ Anne Sheridan picture called GOOD SAM  (1948), directed by Leo McCarey  (who gave us DUCK SOUP (1933),  THE AWFUL TRUTH (1937), and many others).  The picture was in line with Cooper’s everyman image, with tender moments reading the children bedtime stories.   The picture is filled with “Capra like” laughter...

SALTY MARIE DRESSLER

One of the pleasures of writing on what you enjoy is sharing something personal about a common subject. When I first discovered Marie Dressler, I was not impressed.  I had thought that film stars should fall into glamour and grace or tough guys with guns, swords, and horses.  It took me a few years to...

BIG SCREEN BENEDICTION

  TCM Classic film festival for 2013 announced their full program today. Found some interesting morals among the always interesting program. Having the good fortune have attended this festival in 2011 I looked knowingly at the midnight screenings. TCM this year will be running a 35 mm print of PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE and...