June 3rd marks what would have been the 100th birthday of Paulette Goddard, one of the top female stars at Paramount during the 1940s.  True, we can’t ever really know the truth about the birthdates of the great ladies of the silver screen, but I’m willing to accept 1910 as her birth year if only [...]

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Though I’m firmly on record proclaiming Remember the Night (1940) as the film that contains my all-time favorite Barbara Stanwyck performance, I must say that My Reputation (1946) has another of my fave Stanwyck turns.  Yes, there are many Stanwyck jewels to choose from, starting with her sublime screwball work in The Lady Eve (1941) and [...]

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If the late Lena Horne was born to play one role, then that one role was Julie LaVerne, the light-skinned black actress in Show Boat, the legendary Broadway musical written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein, based on Edna Ferber’s novel.  The third of its three screen versions was MGM’s 1951 blockbuster, the version for which Horne seemed [...]

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Last week I wrote about Broadway Rhythm (1944) as an example of a botched MGM musical of the 1940s.  Ten years later, Athena is a good example of a lousy MGM musical 50s-style.  Things were tougher for Athena because it was made when the demise of the genre (that of “original” movie musicals) was imminent, even [...]

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