Austrian-born Hedy Lamarr, one of the Golden Age’s standout beauties, made an auspicious American screen debut opposite Charles Boyer in Algiers (1938), cast as a poor but now jewel-laden Parisian about to sell herself in marriage to portly, much-older Robert Greig.  But in the casbah she clicks with Boyer, perfectly matched in their nonchalance and devastating [...]

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Usually when I write these “Happy 100th” tributes, I focus on one of my subject’s lesser-known gems, some movie I’m especially eager to talk about because I know that relatively few people have seen it.  In the case of Ginger Rogers, who died at 83 in 1995 and who would have turned 100 this past weekend (July 16th), I’m [...]

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Here’s a movie I had avoiding seeing ever since Turner Classic Movies started showing it.  Doesn’t the title make it sound awful?  Don’t you expect some forced hillbilly comedy with Ma and Pa Kettle living “down the road apiece”?  The Romance of Rosy Ridge turns out to be a surprisingly good drama about an interesting moment in [...]

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In the last few weeks, completely by coincidence, I watched (yet again) Lost Horizon (1937) and Brigadoon (1954), and, for the first time, Desert Legion (1953).  Perhaps if I hadn’t watched them so closely together, it wouldn’t have been as blatantly obvious that they are three versions of the same plot, each focused on a [...]

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