BEYOND CASABLANCA is now on Kindle!

I'm very pleased to announce that BEYOND CASABLANCA: 100 CLASSIC MOVIES WORTH WATCHING, is now available as an ebook for Kindle, and right now you can buy the book for only $4.99! I have been working on making this happen since before Christmas, so I'm very excited that it is now a reality. I hope it will help these great old movies find more viewers and new fans.

BEYOND CASABLANCA is also still available as a paperback from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.com, and if you're buying the book for an older relative or friend that is probably still the best way to go. It has been a big hit with my lifetime learners, which makes me happy because it was written with them in mind.

There are also only a few days left for the Goodreads Giveaway of BEYOND CASABLANCA, and we're up to 300 entries so far! If you'd like to win a free copy, head over there before January 31 and put your name in the hat.

Classic Films in Focus: IT'S LOVE I'M AFTER (1937)

We don't generally associate any of its leading actors with the genre of romantic comedy, but that's one reason why Archie Mayo's 1937 film, It's Love I'm After, comes as such a pleasant surprise. The flirtatiously light story could have underpinned an Astaire and Rogers musical, but instead we have Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, and Olivia de Havilland making a troublesome romantic triangle and providing plenty of laughs along the way. Throw in a supporting cast that includes Patric Knowles, Eric Blore, and Spring Byington, and you've got a perfect recipe for the kind of cinematic confection that dominated the smart, sprightly comedies of the era.

Leslie Howard plays stage star Basil Underwood, who engages in a love/hate courtship with his leading lady, Joyce Arden (Bette Davis). Basil is briefly distracted, however, by the adoration of Marcia West (Olivia de Havilland), much to the dismay of her fiance, Henry (Patric Knowles). Henry convinces Basil to turn up at Marcia's house and behave as badly as possible in order to disillusion her, but the plan backfires, and jealous Joyce further complicates the situation by pursuing Basil to the Wests' estate.

There are several delights on offer here. One is seeing Howard and Davis play Romeo and Juliet on stage, whispering poison into each other's ears even as they proclaim the doomed lovers' lines. If you like the sparring thespian couple in To Be or Not to Be (1942), you'll love these two, and Howard brings an especially amusing version of his usual diffidence into the egotistical actor's character. Another highlight is Olivia de Havilland's screwball performance as the starstruck fan; she really invests her scenes with a wacky intensity that makes one wonder why she didn't get to do more of these kinds of films. If you've only seen her as the demure Melanie in Gone with the Wind (1939), you're in for a shock here. Speaking of Gone with the Wind, there's a hilarious Clark Gable gag near the end of the picture, made funnier by the fact that Howard, de Havilland, and Gable would all be starring in that film just two years later.

Patric Knowles is handsome and earnest as Henry; if he pales in comparison to Howard's Basil, he's at least very good to look at, and his dullness serves the purpose of the character. Spring Byington plays the kind of nutty society matron she often brought to life on screen, and she's as funny here as you would expect her to be, although the crowded house party limits her scenes. Nancy Drew fans will also recognize teenaged Bonita Granville as the keyhole spy, Gracie, although a little of her character goes a long way. Eric Blore, however, takes the prize among the supporting cast for the funniest lines and the best reaction shots; watch the way he employs his toupee as a comic prop throughout the film. His presence helps to increase the feeling of watching a Fred and Ginger picture with the musical numbers removed, since he also appeared with them in Top Hat (1935), Swing Time (1936), and Shall We Dance (1937). He's funny enough all by himself to make the whole movie worth watching, no matter how you feel about the more celebrated stars.

See more of Howard and Davis together in Of Human Bondage (1934) and The Petrified Forest (1936). Ironically, Howard's last film before It's Love I'm After was Romeo and Juliet (1936), in which Norma Shearer played his leading lady. For more comedy with Bette Davis, try The Bride Came C.O.D. (1941). You'll find Olivia de Havilland and Patric Knowles in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), while de Havilland and Davis make a memorable pair in Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). Director Archie Mayo also made the hilarious Jack Benny comedy, Charley's Aunt (1941), as well as the Marx Brothers picture, A Night in Casablanca (1946).

 It's Love I'm After is not especially well-known today, but it's now available on DVD from Warner Archive, and hopefully that will help more people find and enjoy it. It's definitely worth the effort if you can track it down.

Classic Films in Focus: ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES (1938)

The early 30s were the heyday of gangster pictures, with movies like The Public Enemy (1931) and Scarface (1932) heating up the screen. By the end of the decade the moral arbiters had become alarmed about gangster movies being a bad influence on the kids in the audience; therefore, pictures that featured gangster characters were supposed to show that the bad guys would always get their comeuppance in the end. Of course, the gangsters had died in the earlier movies, too, but they had always gone out with a bang. Director Michael Curtiz's Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) pays some lip service to moral rectitude in its juxtaposition of James Cagney's doomed criminal with Pat O'Brien's saintly priest; certainly, its shocking finale seems to support the attempt to strip crime of its glamor, but ultimately it undermines its own ending to give us yet another example of Cagney's brilliance at playing the seductive thug.

Cagney stars as Rocky Sullivan, who learns to become a career criminal in juvenile hall after getting caught in a youthful crime. His pal and accomplice, Jerry Connolly (Pat O'Brien), outran the cops that fateful day and grows up to be a Catholic priest in the same poor neighborhood where he and Rocky were kids. When Rocky gets out of his most recent stint in prison, he reunites with Jerry while horning his way into some crooked business schemes managed by his underhanded lawyer, James Frazier (Humphrey Bogart), and cohort Mac Keefer (George Bancroft). Jerry wants to save Rocky, but even more he wants to save the neighborhood kids from following Rocky's example, and when Rocky gets caught for the last time Jerry asks him to make a terrible sacrifice for the boys' benefit.

Cagney's appeal as Rocky is tremendous, and Pat O'Brien really doesn't have a chance against him with the audience's sympathies. The two of them are like those cartoons of the Faustian angel and devil on somebody's shoulders, and the angel is always the most obnoxious bore. It's easy enough to see that we're supposed to like Jerry Connolly better and that he obviously occupies the moral high ground, but Rocky is more fun every step of the way, and in the end Rocky even turns out to be the better man since the scope of his sacrifice is far beyond anything that Father Jerry will ever be asked to do. I side with the opinion that Rocky's final performance in the gas chamber is just that, although some people insist that it's meant to be ambiguous. The Dead End Kids might buy Father Jerry's story that Rocky went out yellow, but the audience, I think, is meant to know a wink at the Hays Code when they see one.

The supporting cast gives the movie additional depth and character. Ann Sheridan has great appeal as Rocky's love interest, and Bogart exudes sweaty cowardice as the two-timing lawyer. The Dead End Kids run amok like gritty boy versions of the cast of Annie; they had started out on Broadway in Dead End and come to Hollywood as a package deal; their first film appearance was a 1937 screen adaptation of the play, but they proved popular with audiences and made several subsequent films. Take time to appreciate Frankie Burke, the actor who plays Rocky as a boy; he really does a great job capturing the persona of a youthful Cagney.

Angels with Dirty Faces picked up three Oscar nominations, including nominations for Cagney and Curtiz, but it went home empty-handed. Cagney would eventually win his only Oscar for a very different role in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). For more of Cagney's great gangsters, see The Public Enemy (1931) and White Heat (1949). Bogart plays more bad guys in The Petrified Forest (1936) and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). For a change of pace, try one of Michael Curtiz's other 1938 films, The Adventures of Robin Hood. Curtiz actually earned two nominations for Best Director in 1939, one for Angels and one for the Claude Rains drama, Four Daughters (1938); even though he lost to Frank Capra for You Can't Take It with You (1938), that's still an impressive accomplishment. He would win the Oscar a few years later for directing the immortal Casablanca (1942).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.

Classic Films in Focus: ROOM SERVICE (1938)

There are several truly brilliant Marx Brothers films, including Duck Soup (1933) and A Night at the Opera (1935), but Room Service (1938), directed by William A. Seiter, offers little to compare with them. It's a shame, too, because in addition to the brothers we get Lucille Ball and a very young Ann Miller along for the ride, and a combination like that ought to be a winner when it comes to comedic opportunities. If the opportunities are there, however, the movie fails to make the most of them, and Room Service ends up among the weakest of the Marx Brothers outings.

The plot of Room Service is relatively straightforward. Groucho plays theater producer Gordon Miller, who is struggling to get funding for his play while he and his actors crash the hotel of Gordon's brother-in-law. The hotel brass want the actors thrown out, but the ragtag group uses a variety of zany ruses to avoid getting the boot until the play can open.

Because this picture is not an original Marx Brothers story - it was adapted from a stage play - several of the usual elements of a Marx Brothers movie are notably absent, including the wonderful musical solos by Chico and Harpo. Groucho seems subdued; his usual barbed patter must give way to the scripted material, and he's left duck-walking around the hotel room without enough to do. The story might be funny enough if it were not trying to be a Marx Brothers film, but their presence creates expectations that go unfilled. Lucille Ball plays it more or less straight, Ann Miller is underused, and the funniest guy in the whole movie turns out to be Frank Albertson as the inexperienced young playwright, Leo Davis. Classic movie fans will most likely recognize Albertson as the braying Sam Wainwright in It's a Wonderful Life (1946), but his career included more than 180 film and television appearances.

If you are new to the Marx Brothers, start with one of their best films instead; A Day at the Races (1937) makes an excellent first outing, especially if you are watching with kids. After that, try A Night in Casablanca (1946) or even At the Circus (1939), which at least offers the attraction of Groucho singing "Lydia, the Tattooed Lady" to make it worthwhile. See more of Lucille Ball's earlier work in Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) and Lured (1947). Ann Miller, who was only 15 when she made this film and You Can't Take It with You (1938), would go on to star in classics like On the Town (1949) and Kiss Me Kate (1953). Director William A. Seiter, a veteran of silent films and musical comedies, also oversaw several Shirley Temple pictures, including Stowaway (1936), which actually makes for a better example of his work than Room Service.

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.

Classic Films in Focus: THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE (1945)

Few romantic movies could be more tenderly affecting than John Cromwell's sentimental drama, The Enchanted Cottage (1945), which stars Dorothy McGuire and Robert Young as imperfect people who find an unlikely love affair awaiting them in a small seaside house. This might, in fact, be the perfect classic film for Valentine's Day, especially for those who want love to come to everyone, not just the beautiful and the fair. This sweet story, with moving performances from Herbert Marshall and Mildred Natwick as well as the leading couple, is exactly the sort of thing to watch with the love of your life, or at least with a pint of ice cream and a box of tissues at hand.

Robert Young stars as Oliver Bradford, whose original wedding plans fall apart after he's maimed and scarred in the war. Hoping to hide from his former fiancee (Hillary Brooke) and his flighty mother (Spring Byington), Oliver takes up residence in the little cottage where he had intended to spend his honeymoon. There he encounters Laura Pennington (Dorothy McGuire), a plain, kindly girl who doesn't seem to mind his injured looks. Oliver marries Laura without any real romantic feelings about her, but something magical happens to the pair after their wedding day.

It's true that The Enchanted Cottage treads lightly where the protagonists' appearances are concerned, but the story suggests their flaws more than it actually shows them. Without makeup and carefully styled hair, in ill-fitting everyday clothes, Dorothy McGuire simply looks like a normal person instead of a movie star, but the transformation scenes still work to great effect. Robert Young's injury makeup includes some scarring around one side of his face, which he accentuates with a useless arm, but he's much easier to look at than, say, The Phantom of the Opera (1925) or The Man Who Laughs (1928), and probably even less scarred than Joan Crawford in A Woman's Face (1941). Both McGuire and Young work hard to sell their characters' self-images as flawed, McGuire with timidity and sadness, and Young with bitterness and despair. We are meant to feel for and with them, and the film succeeds in making that happen.

The love story is presented with a brief frame tale featuring Herbert Marshall as the blind composer, Major John Hillgrove, who befriends both Oliver and Laura and functions as a sort of perfect witness to their early sufferings and eventual happiness. Hillgrove sympathizes with Oliver's despair over his war wounds, having been blinded in the previous war, and it's worth noting that the actor had a special understanding of the role, as he had in fact lost a leg in World War I. Marshall is so good with his artificial leg that you can spend the whole movie fruitlessly looking for any sign of it, but his personal history lends additional pathos to the scene in which the two injured men speak of their feelings and reveal the individual costs of war. Mildred Natwick provides another counterpoint to the young lovers as the widowed owner of the cottage; her relationship with Laura is subtle but effective, and she has several brief but moving scenes that ought to go straight to the heart of any sensitive viewer.

The Enchanted Cottage earned an Oscar nomination for Best Musical Score, and music plays an essential part in the story. The composer, Roy Webb, would collect seven Oscar nominations in all but never win, which is a shame when one considers that his other work includes Cat People (1942), Notorious (1946), and Out of the Past (1947). For more of Dorothy McGuire, see The Spiral Staircase (1945) and Gentleman's Agreement (1947). You'll find Robert Young in The Canterville Ghost (1944) and Crossfire (1947), although he's best remembered today for his later television roles on Father Knows Best and Marcus Welby, MD. See Herbert Marshall in Trouble in Paradise (1932), Foreign Correspondent (1940), and The Letter (1940), and catch Mildred Natwick in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), The Quiet Man (1952), and The Court Jester (1955). Spring Byington plays much less irritating mothers in You Can't Take It with You (1938) and The Blue Bird (1940), but I also enjoy her crazed housekeeper performance in Dragonwyck (1946).

The Enchanted Cottage is available on DVD from Warner Archive, but you cannot currently rent it on Netflix.

The Palace Cinema: A LEGO Set for Serious Cinephiles

It's not everyday that my two greatest obsessions - classic movies and LEGO - overlap, but when they do the results are fantastic. The official unveiling of the upcoming Palace Cinema set took place at BrickFair AL in Birmingham, Alabama, on January 19, 2013, and I was there to drool all over the display model. It's a great set, and one that I think general classic movie fans might well find as irresistible as those of us already involved in the LEGO hobby.

This is a huge Creator set designed to work with the previous Cafe Corner modular kits, and all of those have been terrific, but the classic theater design really sets this latest installment above and beyond. As film fans will immediately note, it takes its architectural cues from that Mecca of the movies, Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. The movie posters on the outside feature in-jokes for adult LEGO hobbyists but also evoke classic Hollywood style, and the set even has stars on the sidewalk outside the entrance and minifigures to stage a classic Hollywood gala premiere.

The Palace Cinema will go on sale at LEGO stores and other retailers in March 2013. List price will be about $150. If you're planning to stage a red carpet event with yours, be sure you get the Marilyn Monroe inspired collectable minifigure in the new Series 9 figure collection. She costs about $3 retail and will add the perfect starlet sex appeal to the scene!

If you'd like to see more photos of the Palace Cinema set and the huge LEGO displays at BrickFair 2013, head over to the Virtual Virago photostream on Flickr!

Classic Films in Focus: THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS (1946)

Lewis Milestone's 1946 noir thriller, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, merits attention for a number of reasons, including another excellent femme fatale performance from Double Indemnity (1944) star Barbara Stanwyck. A story of murder, money, and carefully guarded power, the film presents a fascinating commentary on the ways in which early experiences shape personality and determine destiny, either for good or evil. It also offers an outstanding cast in addition to Stanwyck, including Van Heflin, Lizabeth Scott, Kirk Douglas, and Judith Anderson, all of them in top form as the familiar types of the genre.

Stanwyck plays the adult incarnation of Martha Ivers, a character we first meet as a young girl (played by Janis Wilson). Young Martha's fatal argument with her tyrannical aunt (Judith Anderson) sets the wheel of fortune in motion, bringing freedom and power to Martha but also binding her to the few people who might know what really happened that night. Once grown, she marries Walter (Kirk Douglas), the son of her aunt's chief sycophant, and pushes him into politics and the law. The unexpected return of another childhood companion, Sam (Van Heflin), seems to threaten Martha and Walter's long protection of their dark secrets, and the couple will stop at nothing to ensure his silence, even using his newfound love interest, Toni (Lizabeth Scott), as a pawn in their deadly game.

Martha is one of Stanwyck's steeliest and most deranged characters, and those qualities are established by Janis Wilson's performance before Stanwyck even takes over the role. She needs desperately, and because of that she draws both Walter and Sam to her, although in Walter's case her embrace quickly becomes a death grip. Walter and Martha make for a spectacularly dysfunctional couple, fighting, plotting, and hating each other but bound together in a Wuthering Heights kind of codependency. Countering their mad marriage we have Sam's developing relationship with Toni, a hard luck angel who serves as a foil to Stanwyck's spoiled succubus. The audience sees right away that Toni is the right girl for Sam, but Martha's siren appeal confuses him and draws him in, despite the fact that Sam has been around enough that he ought to know better.

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is also noteworthy because Walter is Kirk Douglas' very first screen role, and he springs fully-formed from the head of Hollywood, holding his own against the well-established Stanwyck, who was nine years his senior and had been in movies for nearly two decades in 1946. Douglas plays Walter as a tragically mixed bag of weakness and good intentions, and his drunk scenes are some of his best moments in the film. His good looks and strong chin suggest that Walter might have been a better man if not for his opportunistic father and dangerous, demanding wife, but he loves Martha in spite of her rotten heart. He can drink himself into a stupor, but he can never leave her, and she knows it all too well. The ending of the movie brings their relationship to a shocking, but perfectly realized, close, with a scene that embodies everything we love about classic noir.

See more of young Kirk Douglas in Out of the Past (1947), his next film and another great example of film noir. Director Lewis Milestone earned the Oscar for Best Director for his work on All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), but he also directed Of Mice and Men (1939) and the original Ocean's 11 (1960). Judith Anderson is best remembered today as Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca (1940), while Van Heflin is probably best known for Shane (1953) and 3:10 to Yuma (1957), although he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Johnny Eager (1941). See more of Lizabeth Scott in Dead Reckoning (1947) with Humphrey Bogart. For a different side of Stanwyck, try Stella Dallas (1937 and The Lady Eve (1941.)  

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is now in the public domain, which means you can see it for free on almost any streaming service, but it looks much better if you can find a high quality print, especially with the stormy scenes early in the film.