Why I Write About Classic Movies

I spent the morning today talking to prospective students for my upcoming Spencer Tracy film series for LearningQUEST, a local lifetime learning program. I have been teaching these courses for several years now, and it's always great to have people return each term for another series and the chance to watch old movies together. Talking with new and returning course members reminded me why I love classic movies and write about them here on my blog.

I love them for themselves, of course. I'm a narrative scholar from way back, and a good story is the ultimate attraction for me. Classic movies tend to focus more on the story than our modern blockbusters, which mostly seem to be written by committees determined to sacrifice plot and character in favor of big special effects that will track well in the overseas box office. Give me a nuanced plot with smart dialogue and a loaded subtext any day; I'll always take Billy Wilder over Michael Bay, thanks very much.

I love them for their stars, too. "We had faces then," brags Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (1950), and, boy, was she right. Classic movies have stars like very few that we see today; partly that's because of the studio system that created and maintained their public personae, but partly it's because the kinds of movies being made - smart, dialogue-driven productions that were character-oriented and intended for adults of both sexes - demanded a different caliber of star. Classic movies have Bette Davis, Ginger Rogers, Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, and Cary Grant, and they're just the tip of the iceberg. Even silent movie stars beat the pants off the green screen newcomers we have today. Watch Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, for example, and you'll never be impressed by modern CGI action movies again.

Talking with the LearningQUEST members about their favorite stars and movies also reminded me that I love these older films for the connection they create between generations. I have always spent a lot of time around people who were older than myself, and even now in my early 40s I am drawn to hang out with people in their 70s and 80s. (It was an extra pleasure to be referred to as a "pretty young girl" today by one of my regulars!) Often my students in these courses will tell me about the first time they saw a particular classic, or an encounter they had with a star, or their own memories of an event being portrayed in a film that we watch, and I really treasure those conversations. I also love to find young classic movie fans on Twitter and other social media; it gives me hope for the future to know that there are 17 year olds out there who are watching John Ford, Akira Kurosawa, Preston Sturges, and Chaplin. How heartening it would be to get those 17 year olds and 75 year olds in the same room and see them all laugh at Sullivan's Travels!

I write about classic movies here on Virtual Virago because they are important to me. In them I find narratives worth thinking about, stars worth watching, and stories worth sharing with others. They aren't "just movies." They are records of our history and culture, collaborative works of art, statements about the meaning and value of the human experience. I hope that other people appreciate what I write, but my chief goal is to draw attention to the films themselves, to help people appreciate them and find new films they might not have seen or even heard of before. That's probably why most other classic movie bloggers write, too. We do it for the love of cinema, for the sake of the films and what they mean to us. We do it because Spence and Kate, Bette and Errol, Fred and Ginger, and all those other lights that filled the Hollywood sky, have reached out to us from across time and space to offer something meaningful and precious that enriches our lives.

Who wouldn't want to write about an experience like that? 

Putting on a Show: Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland

Note: This post is part of the Dynamic Duos Blogathon hosted by Once Upon a Screen and Classic Movie Hub. Visit the host sites for complete lists of all of the great blogs participating in this event!






Looking back, they seem like such different Hollywood creatures: Mickey Rooney, so resilient and tough that in 2013 he’s still with us after more than 300 film and television appearances, and Judy Garland, a bright but fragile star who blazed through fewer than 40 roles before her tragically premature death in 1969. Together, though, they made nine films and ruled the screen as one of the most popular Hollywood duos of the classic era, beginning with Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry in 1937 and ending in 1948 with Words and Music.

What made Rooney and Garland such a hit with audiences? It had - and still has - a lot to do with their youth and the fresh-faced, innocent quality of their onscreen chemistry. At their best, in films like Babes in Arms (1939) and Strike Up the Band (1940), their romantic attraction has a sweetness wholly unassociated with sex. Theirs is a puppy love, eager, sentimental, and simply told if they can just get themselves to grow up enough to say it. They are the boy and the girl next door, denizens of an unfallen age, where putting on a show can solve almost any problem life can dish out.

When they made their first film together in 1937, Garland was still a relative newcomer, but Rooney was already a big star, thanks to his breakthrough title role in the Mickey McGuire shorts and performances in feature films like A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935), Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936), and Captains Courageous (1937). The lead in the first Andy Hardy film, A Family Affair (1937), helped to propel him to even greater fame, and from 1939 to 1941 the short, boyish star was the top box office actor in the country.

Judy’s own star was rising in those years, especially after the huge success of The Wizard of Oz in 1939. She had become part of the Andy Hardy cast with Love Finds Andy Hardy in 1938, and she went on to appear with Rooney in two more of the Hardy films: Andy Hardy Meets Debutante (1940) and Life Begins for Andy Hardy (1941). Andy Hardy, however, already had his primary love interest in Polly Benedict, played by Ann Rutherford, so Garland’s Betsy Booth generally pined in vain for Andy’s affection.

In the “show” pictures the pair really got to demonstrate their compatibility, dancing, singing, plotting, and laughing together as various characters who stage musical revues to save their families, themselves, or their schools. Mickey possesses an almost manic energy in these movies, with big gags, wild dance routines, and crazy costumes. Judy, wide-eyed and adorable, does not yet reveal the toll her fame would take, and her musical performances seem almost effortless.

Judy’s characters tend to be the sincerer and more sensible ones, while Mickey’s hot-blooded young fellows often need to be reminded of the core values of friendship, honesty, and integrity. When MGM varies that formula, as they do in Girl Crazy (1943), things can go a bit off the rails, but when they get it just right in the earlier films, like Strike Up the Band, they really show the two stars at their irresistible best.

If you want to see the Rooney and Garland films for yourself, Turner Classic Movies has a DVD collection of four of their collaborations: Babes in Arms, Strike Up the Band, Babes on Broadway, and Girl Crazy. It includes introductions from Mickey Rooney for each of the films, in which he talks about his memories of Judy Garland and their time together. Warner Archive has also just released a new volume of Andy Hardy films on DVD, which includes Love Finds Andy Hardy. The other Hardy films with Judy Garland are included on an earlier volume of the collection. Babes on Broadway is also currently available on Warner Archive Instant.

A Shroud of Thoughts Reviews BEYOND CASABLANCA

Terry of A Shroud of Thoughts has posted a new review of BEYOND CASABLANCA, so I wanted to share it here. Thanks so much, Terry! While you're visiting, check out the rest of Terry's blog and his own book, TELEVISION: RARE & WELL-DONE.

A Shroud of Thoughts: Beyond Casablanca by Jennifer C. Garlen: If you are a classic film buff and Turner Classic Movies fan on Twitter or Google+, you may be familiar  with Jennifer Garlen. Jennifer is t...

Classic Films in Focus: ZIEGFELD FOLLIES (1945)

Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. and his legacy captivated Hollywood, especially once the rise of the talkies made Ziegfeld style entertainments possible onscreen. Most classic Hollywood musicals opt for a narrative framework to hold their production numbers together, but others, like Ziegfeld Follies (1945), take the master’s approach to the musical and comedy revue. If you’re looking for a plot or any real meaning, you certainly won’t find it here, but you will find a charming collection of sketches and musical numbers performed by some of the biggest stars of the day, including Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, and Gene Kelly.

The revue opens as a kind of sequel to The Great Ziegfeld (1936), with William Powell reprising his role as the Broadway producer, now relocated to heavenly quarters. As Ziegfeld looks back on his career and ponders the kind of show he would make if he were still alive, the film transitions to a series of comedy bits, dances, and songs, mostly featuring MGM stars of the 1940s with a few nods to the old days thrown in.

The retrospective segment is done with stop-motion animation, which gets the picture off to a quirky start that kids might appreciate more than adults. Several of the other sequences also favor oddity over artistry, especially the comedy sketches with Fanny Brice and Red Skelton, but both of those stars know their way around a laugh, and Brice’s appearance brings some real Ziegfeld history to the film. Less successful is the pink circus number that sees Lucille Ball inexplicably cracking a whip at a crowd of sexy cat ladies; it would make more sense if this number were also played for laughs, but Ball is presented in full glamor mode, and the sequence seems to take itself seriously, even if the audience can’t. The Virginia O’Brien song, however, is lovably offbeat, just like the singer herself. O’Brien counters the opening song’s tribute to lovely ladies by singing the praises of manly men; the performance prefigures her memorable “Wild, Wild West” number in The Harvey Girls (1946), which would come out the next year.

Fans of Fred Astaire will find a lot to like in Ziegfeld Follies because he appears more often than any other performer in the film, but the highlight is a rare dance duet with Gene Kelly, which offers a first-rate opportunity to contrast the physical styles of the two stars. Other memorable performances include Lena Horne singing “Love” and Judy Garland giving a mock interview as a great dramatic actress. You’ll also find Cyd Charisse, Kathryn Grayson, Lucille Bremer, James Melton, Marion Bell, and Esther Williams in the revue’s more serious numbers, while Edward Arnold, Hume Cronyn, Victor Moore, William Frawley, and Keenan Wynn all appear in the comedy sketches.

Different directors worked on various segments of the picture, including Vincente Minnelli, George Sidney, Lemuel Ayers, and Charles Walters. If you enjoy the musical revue format, try Till the Clouds Roll By (1946) and That’s Entertainment! (1974). For more Ziegfeld films, see The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and Ziegfeld Girl (1941). Ziegfeld also appears as a character in many Broadway star stories, including The Jolson Story (1946), The Story of Will Rogers (1952), The Eddie Cantor Story (1953), and Funny Girl (1968).

You can currently see Ziegfeld Follies in HD on Warner Archive Instant.

Classic Films in Focus: THIRTEEN WOMEN (1932)

Directed by George Archainbaud, Thirteen Women (1932) is a Pre-Code thriller starring two great actresses of the 1930s, Irene Dunne and Myrna Loy. As its name implies, this film focuses on female characters for most of its action, which sets it apart from other murder mysteries, but it’s a mixed bag as a picture, with a particularly weak third act. Fans of Myrna Loy, however, will still want to see Thirteen Women for another of the star’s memorable performances as an exotic femme fatale, while those who enjoy classic Hollywood trivia will appreciate the film as the only screen appearance of the doomed Peg Entwistle, who famously committed suicide by throwing herself from the top of the Hollywood sign.

Loy plays the mesmerizing half-caste murderess, Ursula Georgi, who uses a swami (C. Henry Gordon) to exact revenge on a group of schoolmates who were unkind to her years ago. One by one the women succumb to Ursula’s baleful influence, and even the swami ends up dead. The survivors gather and hope to ward off their predicted fates, but their leader, Laura (Irene Dunne), must confront the enemy when Ursula targets her son, Bobby (Wally Albright), as the next victim. With the help of a handsome police sergeant (Ricardo Cortez), Laura strives to keep Ursula’s latest prediction from coming true.

We never actually see the whole group of thirteen women in the movie; apparently, some of them ended up on the cutting room floor, with the final version of the picture chopped down to a mere 59 minutes. Fortunately for Hollywood history, Peg Entwistle’s brief appearance stayed in the picture, giving us our only chance to see her onscreen. Like most of the other actresses, Entwistle gets a chance to crank up the sense of doom; ironically, her character, Hazel Cousins, does not commit suicide but instead goes mad and stabs her husband. Mary Duncan opens the series of tragedies with a very effective performance as June Raskob, the trapeze artist, and Kay Johnson has perhaps the most heart-wrenching fate as the grieving mother, Helen, who needs little encouragement from Ursula to kill herself after the recent death of her young child.

Myrna Loy’s performance as the villainous foreigner serves as the real attraction of the film. With her striking costumes and heavy eye makeup, Ursula symbolizes the seductive Eastern Other, striking out at white Western women after their thoughtless rejection of her. Loy got typecast in this kind of role early in her career, but she does it so well that it’s easy to see why. Her best scenes feature her seducing and manipulating the helpless swami and her accomplice, Burns (Edward Pawley), especially the moment that sees her willing the swami to death on the train platform. Men simply turn to putty in her hands, and her hypnotic stare rivals that of Bela Lugosi in Dracula (1931). She really is a vamp, formed only to corrupt and destroy. Unfortunately, the ending denies her the kind of suspenseful, thrilling chase and climax that such a character deserves. That deflating, uninspired conclusion proves far more troubling than the missing women or any other problems with the picture, and it keeps Thirteen Women in the minor leagues as an example of its genre.

For another of Myrna Loy’s seductive vamps, see The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), or catch her more famous performances in The Thin Man (1934), The Great Ziegfeld (1936), and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). Irene Dunne earned five Oscar nominations for Best Actress over the course of her career, including nods for The Awful Truth (1937), Love Affair (1939), and I Remember Mama (1948). George Archainbaud directed for many Westerns and television series, including The Lone Ranger series starring Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels.

You can currently see Thirteen Women on Warner Archive Instant.

BEYOND CASABLANCA on Goodreads

Goodreads is a wonderful site for readers, and I enjoy using it to keep track of my own reading and find new books that I might like. BEYOND CASABLANCA: 100 CLASSIC MOVIES WORTH WATCHING also has its own Goodreads page, where you can add the book to your "to-read" list, rate it, and even write reviews.

Here's the link to BEYOND CASABLANCA on Goodreads. I hope you'll check it out! So far, the book has 12 ratings and 3 reviews, and it's on over 200 "to-read" lists. You can also visit my Author Page, have a look at my other books, and even become a fan (I have 11 fans right now - maybe I'm not ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille!). If you feel especially social, you can become a Goodreads friend and share book suggestions and your reading lists with me, which I very much enjoy.

Even if a classic movie guide isn't your thing, Goodreads is definitely worth a visit, and it's a great way to enhance your experience as a reader of whatever kinds of books you love!

As always, BEYOND CASABLANCA is available in paperback on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and you can buy it directly from the publisher, Westview. The Kindle edition is only $4.99 on Amazon.

Classic Films in Focus: THE GHOST GOES WEST (1935)

Like Oscar Wilde’s story, “The Canterville Ghost,” The Ghost Goes West (1935) offers us an old-fashioned ghost thrust into a modern world with comical results. The film proved a big hit in Britain, where it was made, perhaps because of its romantic view of Scotland and skeptical perspective on nouveau riche Americans, but modern audiences everywhere will plenty to enjoy in this charming fantasy. Directed by René Clair and produced by Alexander Korda, The Ghost Goes West is an excellent choice for those who enjoy light supernatural tales like Topper (1937), The Canterville Ghost (1944), and Blithe Spirit (1945).

Robert Donat stars as both the ghost, Murdoch Glourie, and his modern day kinsman, Donald. Murdoch has been doomed to haunt the family castle until he avenges an insult to the Glourie name, but cash-strapped Donald is forced to sell the place to a wealthy American family who upset Murdoch by moving the whole structure to Florida. Both Donald and Murdoch enjoy the company of lively Peggy (Jean Parker), who longs to see a ghost but can’t tell Donald and Murdoch apart, and both are vexed by the schemes of Peggy’s father (Eugene Pallette) and his rival (Ralph Bunker) to turn Glourie Castle into a marketing stunt.

Donat looks particularly handsome in Murdoch’s full Highland costume, and his scenes as the waggish ghost, both before and after his death, are some of his best moments in the film. Murdoch has a particular eye for the ladies, but Donald possesses less confidence than his spectral relation, especially when it comes to courting Peggy. Eugene Pallette has another blustering, gruff father to play, and as always he does it well, and the sight of him in a kilt, trying to stage a ghostly manifestation, is certainly good for a laugh. Classic film buffs will also enjoy seeing Elsa Lanchester, best known as the screaming Bride of Frankenstein in the 1935 film, in a supporting role as Miss Shepperton, even though she has little to do beyond rolling her marvelously expressive eyes at Eugene Pallette.

Beyond the ghost story and the romantic comedy, The Ghost Goes West is a narrative about authentic family heritage and modern fakery, with Scottish national identity as the contested ground. The first part of the film pokes fun at the Scottish insistence on clan membership beyond all other loyalties; the Glouries and the McLaggens would rather kill each other than kill their common enemies, the English. Murdoch is cursed not for failing as a soldier in the Jacobite Rebellion but for failing to settle the score against the rival clan. Donald, who has failed as the guardian of his birthright, literally sells out to the Americans, who then make a mockery of real Scottish culture by dressing up in kilts and staging bad imitations of Scottish traditions. Luckily for Murdoch, the farce presents him with a long-awaited opportunity to lift the curse and join his ancestors on the other side.

For another classic film that takes a romantic but humorous view of Scotland and Scottish identity, try I Know Where I’m Going! (1945). See more of Robert Donat in The 39 Steps (1935), The Citadel (1938), and Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), for which he won the Oscar for Best Actor. Jean Parker also stars in Little Women (1933), Detective Kitty O’Day (1944), and The Gunfighter (1950). You’ll find Eugene Pallette playing other paternal curmudgeons in My Man Godfrey (1936), The Lady Eve (1941), and Heaven Can Wait (1943). For more from René Claire, try The Flame of New Orleans (1941) and I Married a Witch (1942).

You can see The Ghost Goes West on Hulu Plus or Amazon Instant for $2.99.