A Christmas Carol

I know October is a month that we usually associate with Halloween and other things spooky…but to the folks at Time Life, it’s an opportune time to make certain there’s plenty of classic episodes from The Carol Burnett Show available for the DVD-buying public.  Why October, I hear you asking?  Well, it’s because Carol and…

Well, whaddaya know—Crime does pay!

The august aggregation of classic movie bloggers known as The Classic Movie Blog Association (catchy title!) recently handed out their yearly CiMBA awards…and I know this is going to flabber your gast, but Thrilling Days of Yesteryear collected an actual trophy this year!  (Yes, I know I tried to tackle Our Lady of Great Caftan…

Book Review: Mr. Novak: An Acclaimed Television Series

“A practical idealist, a man who wants nothing more than a chance to take a crack at ignorance eight or ten hours a day, a great hero for the public.”  That is how television writer-producer E. Jack Neuman conceived the central character for a series idea he was discussing with his friend, director Boris Sagal,…

Book Review: Where’s My Fortune Cookie?

In 1988, I journeyed to the wilds of Atlanta’s Emory University as a member of Armstrong State College’s (now Armstrong State University) college bowl team; while there, my fellow team members and I lunched at a now-defunct restaurant (Anybody’s Pizza) and on our way back to Emory stopped by a record store to spend the…

Buried Treasures (literally!): The Lost City of Cecil B. DeMille (2016)

In his 1959 autobiography, legendary movie director Cecil Blount DeMille wrote: “If 1,000 years from now, archaeologists happen to dig beneath the sands of Guadalupe, I hope they will not rush into print with the amazing news that Egyptian civilization, far from being confined to the Valley of the Nile, extended all the way to…

Silly rabbit—Brix are for kids!

It’s a tale right out of The Beverly Hillbillies—wildcatter Tim Henessey (Samuel Adams—not the beer guy, by the way) has had a gusher come in, and now the entire Henessey clan is filthy with money!  (Though in all honesty…they were filthy without money before this picture started.)  The family puts up the “Out of Bidness”…

Adventures in Blu-ray: Topper (1937)

In the 1930s, Hal Roach’s success as an independent producer of short movie comedies was threatened by events completely beyond his control.  His “Lot of Fun” had cranked out one- and two-reelers since 1915 and introduced the ticket-buying public to such popular film comedians as Harold Lloyd, Charley Chase, and Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy. …

“Go to the Slauson Cutoff…”

I know, I know…I lure you good people over to the new Thrilling Days of Yesteryear blog as if I were someone with a panel van and candy, and then I don’t post anything new in close to two weeks.  I apologize profusely—it looks as if normal blogging has resumed. One of the recent TDOY…