Joan Crawford was at the height of her beauty and sex appeal in Grand Hotel and her performance still holds up today.

The Fretchette/Halprin interview is also interesting as they were the real deal when it came to being Hollywood Hippies. Not long after the interview, Halprin dumped Fretchette and married Dennis Hopper.

Before he went into movies, Grant was a singer and dancer in English music hall. Later in life he regretted doing a movie musical. He was on record of saying he would have liked to have done a musical opposite Rita Hayworth. That would have worth seeing.

Actually he did say "Judy, Judy" to Rita Hayworth's character "Judy" in Only Angels Have Wings.

Back in the pre code era, Pat O'Brien starred in another football movie in the title role of College Coach. In that one he plays a ruthless, cheating coach who stops at nothing to win and this being pre code he gets away from it. Never seen it, but it sounds like fun. HEre's imdb on College Coach: http://www.imdb.co…

I think The Killing is the best movie Kubrick directed. No pretention or attempts at art or making an important statement. Just an ingeniously filmed and plotted film noir/heist workout.

They should have just made a large screen adaptation of the pbs kids show Dinosaur Train instead.

I'll add Lana Turner in the last half of Madame X where she shed her glam image and played an absinthe addicted wreck. And probably delivered the best acting of her career.

Good article, though the Jobim album is an essential and not a "difficult" album at all. Jobim and arranger Claus Ogerman laid down some great music for Sinatra to sing with on that one.
In The Wee Small Hours is my favorite of the Capital albums. Supposedly Tony Wilson of Factor had Joy Division's Ian Curtis listen…

1 Marvelettes
2 Supremes
3. Martha and the Vandellas
4. Shangri Las
5. Cookies

Not to mention Miley Cyrus outdoing Gaga when it comes to public attention stunts and Miley does hers with a lot less pretentiousness than Gaga.

One other thing that prevented Scottie and Midge from getting together: Poor Midge just does not look like Kim Novak.

After Peyton Place went off the air, ABC launched another show that was blatantly adverstised as a novel for television—Harold Robbins' The Survivors, which starred Lana Turner (who played Constance in the movie version of Peyton Place) and George Hamilton, among others. Apparently Robbins' wrote a 3 page triple…

Antonioni's films are a joy to watch if for nothing for his great sense of screen composition. You can freeze the frame at about any moment and take in a masterful composition. La Notte is full of such moments. ONe of my faves is the scene where Moreau and the young man sit in the car laughing and talking during the…

Won't happen, but hOw about no more athletic scholarships and that anyone on college sports teams have to meet the admission requirements of the school they play for?

In the early 40s RKO had a successful series in The Falcon, George Sanders played the Falcon, but his star was rising so for The Falcon's Brother, the torch was handed off to Tom Conway's Sander's real life brother, to play the title role and then take over the series as the new falcon.

Jumping back to the silent era got to give a mention to the Gish sisters Lillian and Dorothy who appeared in several DW Griffith films together, most notably Orphans of the Storm.

Good movie, but the original, Criss Cross, is a quintessential noir with stylish direction from Robert Siodmak and fine performances from Burt Lancaster, femme fatale (and pre Lilly Munster) Yvonne De Carlo and the oily but dapper Dan Duryea.

I'll vote for Lucy Carmichael of The Lucy Show.  She was always messing it up, but Mr. Mooney kept her and in fact hired her when they moved out to LA.  Then again, why would Lucy want to work for such a pompous blowhard.

I give a slight edge to the book due to its focused, and unrelenting bleakness.