Ricardo Cortez in 'Ten Cents a Dance,' with Barbara Stanwyck. No matter how unthankful the role, whether hero or heel – or, not infrequently, a combination of both – Cortez left his bedroom-eyed, mellifluous-voiced imprint in his pre-Production Code talkies. Besides Barbara Stanwyck, during the 1920s and 1930s Cortez made love to and/or life difficult for, a whole array of leading ladies of that era, including Bebe Daniels, Gloria Swanson, Betty Compson, Betty Bronson, Greta Garbo, Florence Vidor, Claudette Colbert, Mary Astor, Kay Francis, Joan Crawford, Irene Dunne, Joan Blondell, and Loretta Young*. (See previous post: “Ricardo Cortez Q&A: From Latin Lover to Multiethnic Heel.”) Not long after the coming of sound, Ricardo Cortez was mostly relegated to playing subordinate roles to his leading ladies – e.g., Kay Francis, Irene Dunne, Claudette Colbert – or leads in “bottom half of the double bill” programmers at Warner Bros. or on loan to other studios. Would...
- 7/7/2017
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
The King Baggot Tribute will take place Wednesday September 28th at 7pm at Lee Auditorium inside the Missouri History Museum (Lindell and DeBaliviere in Forest Park, St. Louis, Missouri). The 1913 silent film Ivanhoe will be accompanied by The Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra and there will be a 40-minute illustrated lecture on the life and career of King Baggot by We Are Movie Geeks’ Tom Stockman. A Facebook invite for the event can be found Here
Here’s a comprehensive look at the life and career of King Baggot
Article by Tom Stockman
They gathered to see the stars at St. Louis Union Station on Saturday March 25th 1910. President Taft had made a stop near the Twentieth Street entrance ten days earlier, but the crowd this day was much larger. Thousands, mostly excited women wearing ankle-length dresses and waving felt pennants lined up hoping for a glimpse, or perhaps...
Here’s a comprehensive look at the life and career of King Baggot
Article by Tom Stockman
They gathered to see the stars at St. Louis Union Station on Saturday March 25th 1910. President Taft had made a stop near the Twentieth Street entrance ten days earlier, but the crowd this day was much larger. Thousands, mostly excited women wearing ankle-length dresses and waving felt pennants lined up hoping for a glimpse, or perhaps...
- 9/28/2016
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Norma Shearer films Note: This article is being revised and expanded. Please check back later. Turner Classic Movies' Norma Shearer month comes to a close this evening, Nov. 24, '15, with the presentation of the last six films of Shearer's two-decade-plus career. Two of these are remarkably good; one is schizophrenic, a confused mix of high comedy and low drama; while the other three aren't the greatest. Yet all six are worth a look even if only because of Norma Shearer herself – though, really, they all have more to offer than just their top star. Directed by W.S. Van Dyke, the no-expense-spared Marie Antoinette (1938) – $2.9 million, making it one of the most expensive movies ever made up to that time – stars the Canadian-born Queen of MGM as the Austrian-born Queen of France. This was Shearer's first film in two years (following Romeo and Juliet) and her first release following husband Irving G.
- 11/25/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Norma Shearer films Note: This article is being revised and expanded. Please check back later. Turner Classic Movies' Norma Shearer month comes to a close this evening, Nov. 24, '15, with the presentation of the last six films of Shearer's two-decade-plus career. Two of these are remarkably good; one is schizophrenic, a confused mix of high comedy and low drama; while the other three aren't the greatest. Yet all six are worth a look even if only because of Norma Shearer herself – though, really, they all have more to offer than just their top star. Directed by W.S. Van Dyke, the no-expense-spared Marie Antoinette (1938) – $2.9 million, making it one of the most expensive movies ever made up to that time – stars the Canadian-born Queen of MGM as the Austrian-born Queen of France. This was Shearer's first film in two years (following Romeo and Juliet) and her first release following husband Irving G.
- 11/25/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Virginia Bruce: MGM actress ca. 1935. Virginia Bruce movies on TCM: Actress was the cherry on 'The Great Ziegfeld' wedding cake Unfortunately, Turner Classic Movies has chosen not to feature any non-Hollywood stars – or any out-and-out silent film stars – in its 2015 “Summer Under the Stars” series.* On the other hand, TCM has come up with several unusual inclusions, e.g., Lee J. Cobb, Warren Oates, Mae Clarke, and today, Aug. 25, Virginia Bruce. A second-rank MGM leading lady in the 1930s, the Minneapolis-born Virginia Bruce is little remembered today despite her more than 70 feature films in a career that spanned two decades, from the dawn of the talkie era to the dawn of the TV era, in addition to a handful of comebacks going all the way to 1981 – the dawn of the personal computer era. Career highlights were few and not all that bright. Examples range from playing the...
- 8/26/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
We have added a set pictures from the event Winter Wonderland 2014 VIP Opening Night. Guests included Princess Beatrice of York, Tom Daley, Matt Smith, Natalie Pinkham, Lizzie Cundy, Kara Tointon, Vanessa White, Jo Whiley, Jodie Kidd, David Blakely and their son Indio Kidd, Helena Bonham Carter, Leah Weller, Kirstie Allsopp, Danny O’Donoghue, Anneka Rice, Neon Jungle, Jason Donovan, Jo Wood, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, Shingai Shoniwa, Hofit Golan, Harriet Scott, Brian Friedman, Natt Weller, Percy Parker, Brendan Cole and Zoe Hobbs, Tamara Beckwith and daughter Violet Rose and Roxie Nafousi. Photos are copyright by Landmark / PR Photos. Princess Beatrice of York […]...
- 12/2/2014
- by James Wray
- Monsters and Critics
The King Baggot Tribute will take place Friday, November 14th at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium beginning at 7pm as part of this year’s St. Louis Intenational FIlm Festival. The program will consist a rare 35mm screening of the 1913 epic Ivanhoe starring King Baggot with live music accompaniment by the Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra. Ivanhoe will be followed by an illustrated lecture on the life and films of King Baggot presented by Tom Stockman, editor here at We Are Movie Geeks. After that will screen the influential silent western Tumbleweeds (1925), considered to be one of King Baggot’s finest achievements as a director. Tumbleweeds will feature live piano accompaniment by Matt Pace.
Here’s a comprehensive look at the life and career of King Baggot
Article by Tom Stockman
They gathered to see the stars at St. Louis Union Station on Saturday March 25th 1910. President Taft had...
Here’s a comprehensive look at the life and career of King Baggot
Article by Tom Stockman
They gathered to see the stars at St. Louis Union Station on Saturday March 25th 1910. President Taft had...
- 11/14/2014
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Tumbleweeds will screen Friday, November 14th at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium as part of The King Baggot Tribute at the St. Louis International Film Festival. It will be preceded by a 35mm showing of the 1913 version of Ivanhoe featuring live music by The Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra and an illustrated lecture on the life and career of King Baggot by We Are Movie Geeks own Tom Stockman. Tumbleweeds will feature live piano accompaniment by Matt Pace
William S. Hart (1864-1946) was the first great star of the movie western. Fascinated by tales of the Old West, Hart actually acquired Billy the Kid’s six-shooter and was a friend with legendary lawmen Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson. He entered films in 1914 where, after playing supporting roles in shorts, achieved stardom as the lead in the western The Bargain. Hart was particularly interested in making his westerns realistic and...
William S. Hart (1864-1946) was the first great star of the movie western. Fascinated by tales of the Old West, Hart actually acquired Billy the Kid’s six-shooter and was a friend with legendary lawmen Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson. He entered films in 1914 where, after playing supporting roles in shorts, achieved stardom as the lead in the western The Bargain. Hart was particularly interested in making his westerns realistic and...
- 11/11/2014
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
The most popular film actor in the world 100 years ago was a St. Louis native. Literally the first “movie star”, King Baggot was the first actor to have his name above the title and his stardom marked the first time that audiences went to see a movie because a certain actor was in that film. Born in St. Louis in 1879 and raised in a house on Union Boulevard, King Baggot attended CBC High School and at one time worked for the St. Louis Browns in ticket sales. Baggot was tall and handsome, a blue-eyed Irish boy with a distinctive white streak through his dark hair and the subject of much adoring fan mail. It’s hard to overestimate just how popular King Baggot was in his prime. He was heralded as “King of the Movies,” “The Most Photographed Man in the World” and “The Man Whose Face Is As Familiar...
- 10/9/2014
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
This 1926 poster for a little-known tenement-set silent drama Sunshine of Paradise Alley grabbed my attention recently. Though it conforms to a lot of the conventions of 1920s movie posters, especially in the billing, there is something ineffably not-of-its period about the image. Maybe it’s the coloring (that yellow face, reminiscent in its oddity of Tretchikoff’s Chinese Girl, painted 26 years later) or maybe it’s the tousled hair of star Barbara Bedford, so unlike 1920s movie star styles. And then there’s that beautiful title treatment (the same color as the face) with its unconventional “S”s and stacked “L”s.
Another unusual aspect of the poster is that it is signed—a quite uncommon occurrence in the 20s. (I wrote previously about Henry Clive who was an exception to the rule). The artist was Josef Bakos (1891-1977), a New York-born son of Polish immigrants who was a founding member of “Los Cinco Pintores,...
Another unusual aspect of the poster is that it is signed—a quite uncommon occurrence in the 20s. (I wrote previously about Henry Clive who was an exception to the rule). The artist was Josef Bakos (1891-1977), a New York-born son of Polish immigrants who was a founding member of “Los Cinco Pintores,...
- 3/15/2014
- by Adrian Curry
- MUBI
Wallace Beery from Pancho Villa to Long John Silver: TCM schedule (Pt) on August 17, 2013 (photo: Fay Wray, Wallace Beery as Pancho Villa in ‘Viva Villa!’) See previous post: “Wallace Beery: Best Actor Oscar Winner — and Runner-Up.” 3:00 Am The Last Of The Mohicans (1920). Director: Maurice Tourneur. Cast: Barbara Bedford, Albert Roscoe, Wallace Beery, Lillian Hall, Henry Woodward, James Gordon, George Hackathorne, Nelson McDowell, Harry Lorraine, Theodore Lorch, Jack McDonald, Sydney Deane, Boris Karloff. Bw-76 mins. 4:30 Am The Big House (1930). Director: George W. Hill. Cast: Chester Morris, Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone, Robert Montgomery, Leila Hyams, George F. Marion, J.C. Nugent, DeWitt Jennings, Matthew Betz, Claire McDowell, Robert Emmett O’Connor, Tom Wilson, Eddie Foyer, Roscoe Ates, Fletcher Norton, Noah Beery Jr, Chris-Pin Martin, Eddie Lambert, Harry Wilson. Bw-87 mins. 6:00 Am Bad Man Of Brimstone (1937). Director: J. Walter Ruben. Cast: Wallace Beery, Virginia Bruce, Dennis O’Keefe. Bw-89 mins.
- 8/17/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Wallace Beery: Best Actor Academy Award winner and Best Actor Academy Award runner-up in the same year (photo: Jackie Cooper and Wallace Beery in ‘The Champ’) (See previous post: “Wallace Beery Movies: Anomalous Hollywood Star.”) In the Academy’s 1931-32 season, Wallace Beery took home the Best Actor Academy Award — I mean, one of them. In the King Vidor-directed melodrama The Champ (1931), Beery plays a down-on-his-luck boxer and caring Dad to tearduct-challenged Jackie Cooper, while veteran Irene Rich is Beery’s cool former wife and Cooper’s mother. Will daddy and son remain together forever and ever? Audiences the world over were drowned in tears — theirs and Jackie Cooper’s. Now, regarding Wallace Beery’s Best Actor Academy Award, he was actually a runner-up: Fredric March, initially announced as the sole winner for his performance in Rouben Mamoulian’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, turned out to have...
- 8/17/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Mickey Rooney movie schedule (Pt): TCM on August 13 See previous post: “Mickey Rooney Movies: Music and Murder.” Photo: Mickey Rooney ca. 1940. 3:00 Am Death On The Diamond (1934). Director: Edward Sedgwick. Cast: Robert Young, Madge Evans, Nat Pendleton, Mickey Rooney. Bw-71 mins. 4:15 Am A Midsummer Night’S Dream (1935). Director: Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle. Cast: James Cagney, Dick Powell, Olivia de Havilland, Ross Alexander, Anita Louise, Mickey Rooney, Joe E. Brown, Victor Jory, Ian Hunter, Verree Teasdale, Jean Muir, Frank McHugh, Grant Mitchell, Hobart Cavanaugh, Dewey Robinson, Hugh Herbert, Arthur Treacher, Otis Harlan, Helen Westcott, Fred Sale, Billy Barty, Rags Ragland. Bw-143 mins. 6:45 Am A Family Affair (1936). Director: George B. Seitz. Cast: Mickey Rooney, Lionel Barrymore, Cecilia Parker, Eric Linden. Bw-69 mins. 8:00 Am Boys Town (1938). Director: Norman Taurog. Cast: Spencer Tracy, Mickey Rooney, Henry Hull, Leslie Fenton, Gene Reynolds, Edward Norris, Addison Richards, Minor Watson, Jonathan Hale,...
- 8/13/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
In Robert Wiene’s 1920 dreamlike horror classic, veteran German actor Werner Krauss plays the mysterious Dr. Caligari, the apparent force behind a creepy somnambulist named Cesare and played by Conrad Veidt, who abducts beautiful Lil Dagover. The finale in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari has inspired tons of movies and television shows, from Fritz Lang's 1944 film noir The Woman in the Window to the last episode of the TV series St. Elsewhere. In addition, the film shares some key elements in common (suppposedly as a result of a mere coincidence) with Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio's 2011 thriller Shutter Island. The 1920 crime melodrama Outside the Law is not in any way related to Rachid Bouchareb's 2010 political drama. Instead, the Tod Browning-directed movie is a well-made entry in the gangster genre (long before the explosion a decade later). Browning, best known for his early '30s efforts Dracula and Freaks,...
- 4/1/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Lon Chaney on TCM: He Who Gets Slapped, The Unknown, Mr. Wu Get ready for more extreme perversity in West of Zanzibar (1928), as Chaney abuses both Warner Baxter and Mary Nolan, while the great-looking Mr. Wu (1927) offers Chaney as a Chinese creep about to destroy the life of lovely Renée Adorée — one of the best and prettiest actresses of the 1920s. Adorée — who was just as effective in her few early talkies — died of tuberculosis in 1933. Also worth mentioning, the great John Arnold was Mr. Wu's cinematographer. I'm no fan of Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), or The Phantom of the Opera (1925), but Chaney's work in them — especially in Hunchback — is quite remarkable. I mean, his performances aren't necessarily great, but they're certainly unforgettable. Chaney's leading ladies — all of whom are in love with younger, better-looking men — are Loretta Young (Laugh, Clown, Laugh), Patsy Ruth Miller...
- 8/15/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
By Doug Gerbino
The Warner Archive Collection released six rare Lon Chaney, Sr. films on October 26 -- five silents and one talkie (his one and only talkie). The films are He Who Gets Slapped (1924); The Monster and The Unholy Three (both 1925); Mr. Wu and Mockery (both 1927); and The Unholy 3 (1930), the sound remake of the 1925 film with a numerical title and a different ending. Lon Chaney, Sr. was a fascinating actor. It's a shame that he is pigeon-holed as a horror star. This is due to the over-availability of two of his most famous films: Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and Phantom of the Opera (1925/29). The fact that these two films are public domain has made them the most widely available of his movies. Within recent years, Warner Home Video has been releasing some of Chaney's MGM films. In 2003, Warner Home Video and TCM released The Lon Chaney Collection, which contained three films: The Aces of Hearts,...
The Warner Archive Collection released six rare Lon Chaney, Sr. films on October 26 -- five silents and one talkie (his one and only talkie). The films are He Who Gets Slapped (1924); The Monster and The Unholy Three (both 1925); Mr. Wu and Mockery (both 1927); and The Unholy 3 (1930), the sound remake of the 1925 film with a numerical title and a different ending. Lon Chaney, Sr. was a fascinating actor. It's a shame that he is pigeon-holed as a horror star. This is due to the over-availability of two of his most famous films: Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and Phantom of the Opera (1925/29). The fact that these two films are public domain has made them the most widely available of his movies. Within recent years, Warner Home Video has been releasing some of Chaney's MGM films. In 2003, Warner Home Video and TCM released The Lon Chaney Collection, which contained three films: The Aces of Hearts,...
- 11/7/2010
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
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