Mercy!

Roy Orbison gets Hollywood Walk of Fame star LOS ANGELES (AP) — Late rock 'n' roll pioneer Roy Orbison has been honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Orbison's widow Barbara accepted the star in front of the Capitol Records building on his behalf on Friday. Orbison died in 1988 at the…

Movies I’ve stared at recently on TCM #51 (“I Was a Communist for the TCM” edition)

As promised, here are my collected thoughts on three of the movies shown during the final night of Turner Classic Movies’ Shadows of Russia festival—all of which I also recorded for the dusty Thrilling Days of Yesteryear archives, including the intro to My Son John (1952) where Bobby Osbo does mention the participation of New York Post film critic Lou Lumenick and Self-Styled Siren…

“Next time I bring Sinatra…”

Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings reports that the release date of the brand-spanking-new edition of Leonard Maltin’s Classic Movie Guide (From the Silent Era Through 1965) was moved up to yesterday, and since that time I’ve been checking Amazon.com every few hours or so to see if they’ve shipped my copy. I am so looking forward to this book, and of…

R.I.P. Howard Zinn and Zelda Rubinstein (and, updated, J.D. Salinger)

Howard Zinn, an author, professor and political activist whose A People’s History of the United States was one of the most influential books in shaping my political attitudes has gone on to his rich reward, having died yesterday at the age of 87 of a heart attack in Santa Monica, CA. His book, first published in 1980, became an unlikely…

Cleaning up some paperwork

A few odds and ends that have been cluttering my desk here at Rancho Yesteryear—including a notable passing from the world of OTR and a mini-review of a movie I watched on TCM last night. Shirley Bell Cole, the child actress who achieved great fame as the voice of radio’s Little Orphan Annie, passed away on…

R.I.P. Pernell Roberts

I saw the notice of Pernell Roberts’ passing on Facebook yesterday, courtesy of Jim Hendrickson at Completeist, and I had originally planned to post an obit last night only to put it off until today. I guess I was either too saddened to hear that Roberts has left us—or if I may be a bit more candid,…

R.I.P. Jean Simmons

I saw the notice of Jean Simmons’ passing last night on Facebook, courtesy of Raquelle at Out of the Past ~ A Classic Film Blog, and had planned to post something but I was getting a bit sleepy…so I figured I’d take care of it the next day. When I woke up this morning, I thought maybe…

“I said it and I’m glaaaaad!!!”

I’ve had more than a few individuals remark to me in the past that I should seriously consider writing a book on classic films or television or even old-time radio…and while I am most assuredly flattered by such a reaction, I don’t anticipate undertaking any kind of project like that in the near future. You see,…

“Bad news travels like wildfire…”

Author Erich Segal, who not only wrote the novel for the critically-panned-but-hugely-popular Love Story (1970) but also the screenplay for the film adaptation, died January 17 at the age of 72. A professor of classics at both Yale and Oxford, he also penned the screenplays for Yellow Submarine (1968), The Games (1971), Oliver's Story (1978), and Man, Woman and Child (1983)—the last two adapted from his novels…

A few odds and ends

The New York Post has done an admirable thing—and that may be the first and only time on this blog you will see “New York Post” and “admirable” in the same sentence—by drawing attention to the recent heated discussion as to why the CBS Network is determined to keep twenty-five public domain Jack Benny Program television masters locked away from…