On April 22, 2009, Englishman Jack Cardiff, one of the 20th-century’s great cinematographers, died at the age of 94.  He did extraordinarily beautiful work on such disparate films as The African Queen (1951), The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), and Fanny (1961), but he will be chiefly remembered for his work on two unforgettable color [...]

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This snappy, unpretentious black-and-white musical is my favorite pre-Wizard of Oz Judy Garland picture.  It’s a “B,” and the plot is the usual backstage-showbiz silliness, but it’s a high-spirited, genuinely “screwball” musical that occasionally reaches hilarious heights.  Of its kind, it’s a dilly, despite, it must be said, a mediocre score and forgettable ”big” numbers.  What’s best about Everybody Sing?  [...]

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On April 8th, Jane Bryan passed away at age 90.  Bryan retired from the screen in 1940, but fans of Warner Brothers flicks of the late 1930s surely remember Bryan as an uncommonly talented ingenue, an actress who could be memorable in the kinds of roles that so often went unnoticed.  She played featured parts in two [...]

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It is easy to forget what a big star Barbara Stanywyck was in the early 1930s, mostly because her films from this period are not the ones for which she is best remembered.  But ever since Frank Capra’s Ladies of Leisure (1930), Stanwyck had been a major Hollywood player.  One of her finest films from [...]

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The new 5-disc Doris Day DVD collection that debuts on April 7th doesn’t offer a particularly enticing quintet, but the inclusion of the rarely seen Starlift is of great interest.  Well, until you see it, that is.  Warner Brothers obviously thought that it could do for the Korean War what it had done for WWII, without [...]

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