Boris Karloff had appeared in something like 60 movies over 11 years before his first important part in Howard Hawks’ “The Criminal Code,” the first of his 13 film appearances in 1931, the year that ended with his breakthrough in “Frankenstein.” The Hawks film — his first release that year …
I thought it would be fun to watch Gordon Douglas’ Liberace vehicle “Sincerely Yours” (1955) — just out from the Warner Archive Collection — back-to-back with Steven Soderberg’s Liberace bio-pic “Beyond the Candelabra,” which bows Sunday night on HBO after its world premiere Wednesday at the Cannes Film Festival. What …
Cablevision is holding onto its lease for the iconic Ziegfeld Theatre but will turn management over to Bow Tie Cinemas, which has a contract pending to buy almost all of Cablevision’s Clearview Clearview Cinemas chain — 41 theaters, mostly in New Jersey, as well as some in Long Island, Westchester …
I had the fantastic time again over the weekend at my third TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood, an event that just keeps getting better and better in its fourth year. This is one brilliantly curated series of films and special events with fantastic celebrities (Norman Lloyd and France Nuyen …
Just-ended April was quite a month for Barbra Streisand and her fans. She was feted last week at Lincoln Center (I wasn’t invited) and a couple of days later a specacular restoration of “Funny Girl” opened the TCM Classic Film Festival (I showed up, she didn’t). Plus both “Funny Girl” …
Universal’s surprisingly satisfying celebration of its 100th anniversary with a robust slate of classic Blu-ray releases — unlike Paramount, which has outsourced most of its back catalogue — unfortunately did not extend to any films starring Deanna Durbin, who as a teenager in the late 1930s rescued the film from …
The only screen teaming of screen legends Bob Hope and Katharine Hepburn is finally making its US TV debut on Turner Classic Movies on Thursday, 46 years after “The Iron Petticoat’’ opened in theaters. Unavailable in the country for decades because of a long-ago public feud between Hope and the …
The TCM Vault Collection, which celebrates its fourth anniversary next month, scores a coup with today’s first-ever U.S. video release in any format of “The Iron Petticoat” (1956), a film so hard to see it’s never even been shown on TV in this country (a situation TCM, which has licensed …
No, Nancy Olson doesn’t think think Betty Schaeffer, her level-headed character in “Sunset Blvd,” goes back to Artie — the financee (Jack Webb) she dumped — after her new lover Joe Gillis (William Holden) gets plugged by Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). “She injured that relationship, and Artie’s not going to …
By LOU LUMENICK It’s a question that’s fascinated audiences since “Casablanca’’ premiered in New York City 70 years ago this month: What ever happened to Rick and Ilsa? Was saloonkeeper Richard Blaine, played so iconically by Humphrey Bogart, ever reunited with his beautiful ex-lover Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), whom he …