I just got back from New Orleans on Tuesday night.  My partner Earl and I took the overnight train in both directions, sharing a little sleeping-car compartment that was surprisingly comfortable.  We spent four amazing days at the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival in the French Quarter.  The weather was spectacular, the oysters abundant, the beignets crispy, and the [...]

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I started writing TENNESSEE WILLIAMS AND COMPANY:  HIS ESSENTIAL SCREEN ACTORS in February of 2009.  All along, my plan was to have a book about the Williams movies that would be available for his 100th birthday on March 26, 2011.  I finished writing the book in January of 2010 and turned it in to my publisher [...]

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On March 12, Liza Minnelli turned 65, officially a senior citizen though perennially a Hollywood princess born during the Golden Age.  She was ugly-duckling royalty who showed everyone that she could make a mark of her own (though never quite making us forget who her mother was).  Liza’s movie career has been a train wreck [...]

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March 3rd marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Jean Harlow, the original blond bombshell.  She has been dead for 74 years, dying at the age of just 26, meaning that her life was a full decade shorter than Marilyn Monroe’s.  Since Harlow was the epitome of a pre-Code star, one can only wonder [...]

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