Remember when movie musicals were vehicles for artists who could wow you with their singing and/or dancing skills? That would have been the age of Astaire and Garland and Kelly. Or remember the age of vocal dubbing, when non-musical stars got leads in adaptations of Broadway musicals? This was often an unfortunate era but it [...]

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After months of anticipation, this Monday, September 22nd, is the night that Turner Classic Movies pays tribute to John DiLeo’s latest film book SCREEN SAVERS: 40 REMARKABLE MOVIES AWAITING REDISCOVERY. Host Robert Osborne selected the five films to be shown, and he will be introducing them on the air. The evening begins with PORTRAIT OF [...]

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The film for which Kay Francis is best remembered is Paramount’s Trouble in Paradise (1932), a supreme sophisticated comedy and one of director Ernst Lubitsch’s key works. Alongside skilled pros Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins, Francis needed only to be lovely and captivating (result: she’s flawless). Another standout Francis picture is Confession (1937), an exceptional [...]

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The love triangle between widower, David Harvey (William Holden), his indentured servant, Rachel (Loretta Young), and David’s friend, Jim (Robert Mitchum), would cause Rachel and the Stranger to easily fit into the category “romance.” However, as John DiLeo suggests in Screen Savers, the movie’s integration of many genres makes it a cornucopia of styles, the [...]

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In the hands of the esteemed German-born Ernst Lubitsch, who had been a Hollywood director since 1923, The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, based on Sigmund Romberg’s 1924 operetta The Student Prince (whose source material was Wilhelm Meyer-Förster’s novel Karl Heinrich and the subsequent play version), was another hit for MGM and the best of [...]

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