Remember at the end of 1946′s THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES when the characters played by Dana Andrews and Teresa Wright, despite their challenges of underemployment, post-war stress, and scant time knowing each other, decided to get married?  Did you ever wonder what sorts of lives and marriage that couple would be sustaining a [...]

If I were using the old rule of judging a book by its cover, I shouldn’t be able to tolerate this movie. For most of the studio era, Twentieth Century-Fox generated tons of awful musicals, with listless plots, sexless dancing, and brassy orchestrations.  When Veronica Lake told Joel McCrea in SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS that “musicals hurt [...]

I was an adolescent — and the day was cold and sunny — when I went to a Saturday matinee of Richard Brooks’ THE HAPPY ENDING. That day and that movie came back to me as I read that Jean Simmons died. I haven’t seen it since (the film might not have aged well) but [...]

At her excellent website Ferdy on Films, etc. Marilyn Ferdinand has called for film bloggers to list their 15 favorite dancers.   CLICK HERE TO READ MY LIST. Doug / PoMo Joan

Allan Dwan made over 400 movies during a fifty-year period. When he started directing, there was no such thing as an American feature film: movies lasted 20 minutes, tops. He was making movies before Chaplin. Dwan’s debut behind the camera came only a few months after the East Coast-based movie industry had relocated to a [...]