The plot against Harry

The following passage kicks off the chapter on comic legend Harry Langdon in Smileage Guaranteed: Past Humor, Present Laughter, the invaluable reference tome written by film historian/friend of the blog Richard M. Roberts: All right...that’s it—hey, you!  Yes, you—come here!  It’s time for a heart-to-heart, mano a mano.  Now I know there’s a lot of…

“A séance is held in the Great House at Collinwood…”

To address her nephew David’s (David Henesy) insistence that he’s seen and spoken with an apparition (Sharon Smyth) identified as Sarah Collins, family matriarch Elizabeth Stoddard Collins (Joan Bennett) reluctantly agrees to participate in a séance along with her brother Roger (Louis Edmonds), daughter Carolyn (Nancy Barrett), Dr. Julia Hoffman (Grayson Hall), and Victoria Winters…

From the DVR: Nothing But a Man (1964)

Thanks to The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™, I was able to DVR a feature film that’s been on my “must-see” list for many years now. The groundbreaking independent feature Nothing But a Man (1964) was selected to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry in 1993 (the same year it was restored and…

“And they used Bon Ami!”

Before my family and I relocated from Teays Valley to Ravenswood, West Virginia in the fall of 1972, I spent my formative years attending St. Francis of Assisi in St. Albans.  It was a Catholic school, and I’ve always had mixed feelings about it because while I remember with great fondness the wonderful friends I made…

“Hello again…Peabody and Sherman here…”

I was an underachiever in my high school years. Mind you, I did all right scholastically...though admittedly, I didn’t always apply myself where studying was concerned. In retrospect, I don’t have too many regrets because most of what I was taught focused on memorizing facts and regurgitating them on command...as opposed to far-more-practical critical thinking…

From the DVR: The Underworld Story (1950)

This past Saturday evening (January 25) saw the premiere of Try and Get Me! (1950; a.k.a. The Sound of Fury) on The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™ as an offering on their Noir Alley showcase, hosted by the Czar of Noir himself, Eddie Mueller.  TCM ran Get Me at midnight as part of a…

Rage Against the (Windstream) Machine II: Texas Blood Money

It took close to three years for the sequel to this post from August 2017 to hit the blogosphere...and I’ll give you a spoiler warning: it isn’t all that different from the original. Saturday morning, I was having connectivity issues (as in...no connectivity) and with sinking-stomach-pit dread I phoned Windstream to report that there was…

“My name is Victoria Winters…”

There was an unsettling rumor going around last November that the long-running daytime drama Days of Our Lives was in danger of getting a pink slip and losing its parking place at NBC...but DOOL’s demise turned out to be a premature one, and it was confirmed that the program would soldier on with Season 56.…

Nun of my business

Most of the obituaries and tributes to the late Shelley Morrison on her passing in early December of 2019 (at age 83) referenced her long-running role as Rosario Salazar, the tart-tongued domestic to flaky Karen Walker (Megan Mullally) on Will & Grace.  MeTV was a noticeable exception (and only fitting, seeing as they’re in the classic TV bidness and…

Book Review: Rediscovering Roscoe – The Films of “Fatty” Arbuckle

In his reference book The Great Movie Comedians, film historian Leonard Maltin writes of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle: “It seems tragic that Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle should be remembered today for a scandal in his private life and barely recognized for his contribution to screen comedy.  To be sure, Arbuckle was never one of the comic giants,…