Mystique Without Camp: The Allure of the Leading Man
Turning “the male gaze” on men It’s true that seeing Rock Hudson surrounded by able-bodied women is fun. In Man’s Favorite Sport? (1964) he’s blocked — trapped in a “stoic”[…]
Category: Actors & Personalities
Actors & Personalities · Genres
Un-Movies: When is a movie not a movie?
All movies have the potential to become a non-movie, particularly when the movie showcases a cause, a disease, a celebrity, an actor’s virtuosity, a play or musical. The movie becomes[…]
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Silents
Blossom in the Dust: Lillian Gish, The Wind, and Mr. Griffith
“I was never young, and if you were never young, how can you ever feel old?” Towards the end of Follow Me, Boys! (1966), a particularly obnoxious piece of Walt[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews · Silents
Step Right Up and Call Me Speedy! Harold Lloyd — Almost All Isn’t Enough
The last of the great silent clowns now on DVD “Step Right Up and Call Me Speedy!” Harold Lloyd has often — too often, really — been called the Anthony[…]
Actors & Personalities · Westerns
Golden Boy: The Sexy Ways of Joel McCrea
“Easy to overlook but endlessly rewarding to look over” Joel McCrea, an amiable, modest actor who turned down parts because he felt he wasn’t good enough for them, began his[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Directors · Silents
Looking at Charlie – the Mutuals: An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin
“Love backed by force, forgiveness sweet, brings hope and peace to Easy Street” “Fulfilling my contract with Mutual was, I suppose, the happiest period of my life.” Charlie Chaplin had[…]
Actors & Personalities · Directors
Shadow Man: On Clint Eastwood, Million Dollar Baby, the Coming Together and the Falling Apart
What’s inside those “sculpted spaces of dark intimacy”
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
Hooker with a Heart of Darkness: Jane Fonda in Klute
Bree Daniels trumps all Fonda’s real-life characters
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Interviews
“Plant Your Feet and Tell the Truth”: An Interview with Clint Eastwood
On Million Dollar Baby and a million-dollar career
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
Blue Skies? Well, Partly Sunny
Fred ‘n’ Bing ‘n’ Irv, Part II
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
Steal This Picture … Please: Yolanda and the Thief
Fred almost suffocates in Minnelli’s Yolanda and the Thief
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Silents
Looking at Charlie: Keystone and Essanay Days
The first in an occasional series of articles on the life and work of Charlie Chaplin
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
Too Much Bing, Not Enough Fred: Holiday Inn
There’s not much room at the Holiday Inn.
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
“Follies” Is Right! Musical Madness at MGM
Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly barely survive Ziegfeld Follies
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
Fred Meets Joan Leslie, and The Sky’s the Limit
“Never let it be said little Freddie can’t carry his load”
Activist & Political · Actors & Personalities · Essays
The Trouble with the Governator: Being Arnold
The ascension of Arnold salvation, apocalypse, or trigger for a resurgent left?
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
Fred and Rita Go Latin in You Were Never Lovelier
Chiu chiu to you, baby
Actors & Personalities · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Angela’s Lashes: Charles Busch’s Die Mommie Die!
Stage vet Charles Busch does glam for camp movie
“Fabulous Gowns but No Pussy!”: An Interview with Holly Woodlawn
A superstar talks Trash and papayas
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Reviews
Little Big Man: John Garfield Triumphs in Anatole Litvak’s Out of the Fog
Garfield wraps it up in this 1941 prole drama based on a Group Theatre production
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