A deep dive into Hollywood's early years
Woman of the Year is a romantic comedy directed by George Stevens, featuring the first on-screen pairing of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. They star as Tess Harding and Sam Craig, rival reporters at the New York Chronicle, who fall and love and rush into marriage despite the marked differences in their lifestyles.
This post is part of the the Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn Blogathon hosted by In The Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood and Love Letters To Old Hollywood
Image: BFI
Throughout August and September the BFI has been hosting a season called Cary Grant: Britain’s Greatest Export. This means that I’ve been spending even more time there than usual, and I’ve watched a lot of his movies over the past few weeks (with even more to come over the next few!). The season is divided into two parts, so I wanted to talk about the films I’ve seen so far in the first part, which spans from the beginning of his career in the early 1930s until the mid-1940s, when he was fully established as a major Hollywood star.
Directed by Rouben Mamoulian, Queen Christina is a pre-code historical biopic which stars Greta Garbo as the eponymous monarch, who struggles to balance the wishes of her subjects and advisors with her own desires. John Gilbert plays Antonio, a handsome Spanish envoy who becomes the queen’s great love.
This post is part of The Costume Drama Blogathon hosted by Moon in Gemini
Directed by Robert Z. Leonard (with un-credited assistance from Buster Keaton), In The Good Old Summertime is a Technicolour musical reworking of Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around The Corner (1940), starring Judy Garland as Veronica Fisher, and Van Johnson as Andrew Larkin, the shop workers who do not realise they are each other’s anonymous pen pal.
This post is part of the Van Johnson Blogathon hosted by Love Letters To Old Hollywood
A Bill of Divorcement is a pre-code drama following a day in the life of a dysfunctional English family at Christmastime, starring Katharine Hepburn in her big-screen debut as Sydney Fairfield, Billie Burke as her mother Meg, and John Barrymore as her father Hilary, who escapes the mental hospital he has spent twenty years in due to shell shock.
This post is part of the Fifth Annual Barrymore Trilogy Blogathon, hosted by In The Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood and Pale Writer
Barbara Stanwyck was not only one of classic Hollywood’s most prolific actresses, but also one of its most versatile. Throughout the 1940s and 50s she starred in a number of noir pictures and, despite the heavy conventions of the genre, turned in remarkably different performances in each. In this post I’ll be looking at three of her noir films from the 1940s, and how they demonstrate her unique and chameleon-like talent for the genre.
This post is part of the Noirathon
Directed by James Tinling, Arizona To Broadway is a pre-code romantic crime drama starring James Dunn as prolific conman Smiley Wells, and Joan Bennett as Lynn Martin, who becomes embroiled in his schemes.
This post is part of the Joan Bennett Blogathon hosted by In The Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood
Fay Wray and Robert Riskin: A Hollywood Memoir is a fascinating and moving memoir of the actress and screenwriter by their daughter, Victoria Riskin. Alongside the insights into their personal and professional lives is an intriguing glimpse into the world of classic Hollywood, a place made tumultuous by war and political uncertainty.
It’s Love I’m After is a screwball comedy directed by Archie Mayo, starring Leslie Howard and Bette Davis as Basil Underwood and Joyce Arden, the constantly bickering Shakespearean actors with a highly dysfunctional relationship who are starring in Romeo and Juliet, and Olivia de Havilland as Marcia West, a debutante who becomes infatuated with Basil after seeing him perform.
This post is part of the Olivia de Havilland blogathon hosted by In The Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood
Rebecca, the classic thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock, stars Laurence Olivier as the brooding and mysterious Maxim de Winter, and Joan Fontaine as his second wife, haunted and tormented by the lingering presence of the first Mrs de Winter, who seems to haunt every inch of the grand Manderley Hall which the de Winters call home.
This post is part of the Daphne du Maurier blogathon hosted by Pale Writer