Buried Treasures: The Sleeping City (1950)

Before the plot of The Sleeping City (1950) gets underway, actor Richard Conte delivers a prologue by introducing himself to the motion picture audience and stating that though City was filmed on location using the facilities of NYC’s famous Bellevue Hospital…the story is fictional—it didn’t take place at Bellevue or any other city’s hospital, for that matter.  (I half-expected…

Gray Market Cinema: The Wedding March (1928)

During the brief period The Great DISH Austerity Program was in effect here at Rancho Yesteryear, I was kind of bummed missing out on one particular “Summer Under the Stars” presentation on The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™.  Their August 4 daylong tribute to Fay Wray was going to yield a pair of rarely…

Buried Treasures: It Ain’t Hay (1943)

When Universal Studios Home Entertainment began releasing the cinematic oeuvre of Bud Abbott & Lou Costello to DVD in 2004—ultimately resulting in four separate volumes, many consisting of two discs featuring eight movies—one of the duo’s Universal romps was conspicuously missing: 1943’s It Ain’t Hay.  Hay was based on a short story by Damon Runyon, “Princess O’Hara,”…

From the DVR: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1960)

Mark Twain’s classic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, published in this country in 1885 (it was introduced in the UK a couple of months earlier), is considered one of the great works in American literature.  Both schools and libraries have either banned or attempted to ban the book practically since its publication (let’s be honest—Finn features…

“Peace…wisdom…and happiness…”

It’s 1870, and the reign of Tsar Alexander II (Paul Harvey) is threatened by a Tartar uprising in Siberia, under the command of the ruthless Ivan Ogareff (Akim Tamiroff).  (Again with the “Ivan” prejudice.)  Alexander dispatches Captain Michael Strogoff (Anton Walbrook) to journey to Irkutsk—a small Siberian town that’s been isolated from the destruction of…