For Cecil B. DeMille there was no such thing as a regular feature film…it always had to be a spectacle. Circus films were a dime a dozen in the 1930s, but none of them really captured that thrill of seeing…
Read more →Articles by: Constance Metzinger
Guest Review: Me and the Colonel
“In life, there are always two possibilities….” It is quite common to find a film that begins terrifically, loses a bit of its appeal midway through and then flounders at the end. But it is rare to find a film…
Read more →Guest Review: Charlie Chan in Panama
Detective Charlie Chan finds himself once again in the midst of treachery and danger in Charlie Chan in Panama — the 22nd installment of 20th Century Fox’s Charlie Chan film series. A sinister criminal by the name of Reiner is…
Read more →Guest Review: The 1947 Musical Favorite “Good News”
“I wish that someone loved me as much as you love you!” All the gals are crazy about Tait University’s cocky football hero Tommy Marlowe (Peter Lawford), but Tommy only has eyes for the new student, beautiful society vamp Pat…
Read more →Patty McCormack Shines In “Kathy O'”
Child-actress Patty McCormack became a household name after the enormous success of The Bad Seed (1956) where she portrayed Rhoda Penmark, a little girl with an evil bent. She had a difficult time following up this film with another dramatic…
Read more →Guest Review: The Gnome-Mobile
“Hunting for gnomes in the Gnome-Mobile….” Jaspar (Tom Lowell) and his grandfather Knobby (Walter Brennan) fear that they may be the last of the gnomes residing in the giant redwoods of California. As many of us know, gnomes live forever,…
Read more →Guest Review: Ivanhoe (1952)
Sir Walter Scott’s 1819 epic medieval novel Ivanhoe was brought to the big screen in 1952 as a gorgeous Technicolor adaptation released through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. Like many medievalĀ films of the era, it combined romance, drama, and a good deal of…
Read more →A Look Back at the Life and Work of Choreographer Eugene Loring
Eugene Loring was never a household name and yet his unique style of dance was recognizable in many musicals of the 1940s and 1950s. His best-known works are Silk Stockings (1955) and Funny Face (1957), but it was through the…
Read more →Guest Review: Across the Wide Missouri (1951)
Bernard de Voto’s book Across the Wide Missouri became a surprise best-seller in 1947, earning the Pulitzer Prize for History. The brass at MGM quickly purchased the rights to the book in order to use the title and then pondered,…
Read more →Sir Roger Moore: An Endearing Bond
In today’s guest post, Constance Metzinger shares her thoughts on Roger Moore,. In May of 2017, we witnessed the passing of Sir Roger Moore, at the ripe age of 89 years. As the media noted at the time, this marked…
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