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…

“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…

“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.…

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,…

“Never a help—always a hindrance!”

Facebook veterans know that there’s a group on there for every person, place or thing currently in existence (and if it hasn’t been created yet...give it a few seconds) and as a member in good standing since 2009 (my dues are paid up), I know there are some really outstanding Facebook aggregations dedicated to a…

“Ah…the vastness of it all…”

One of my Facebook chums and I were having a chinwag about the latest DVD release from our friends at Kit Parker Films/The Sprocket Vault: Charley Chase at Hal Roach: The Talkies Volume Two 1932-33.  This two-disc collection, which “hit the streets” in mid-July this year (July 16), makes available the 15 two-reel comedies that funnyman…

“Around Dodge City and into territory on west…”

Although I was very much familiar with Gunsmoke the TV series throughout my childhood—the program ran on WCHS-TV like tap water, and during my second year at Marshall University, WVAH-TV made it “Must See TV” for my fellow dormmates on weeknights—I never heard a broadcast of the radio Gunsmoke until that same sophomore Marshall year. …

Book Review: Seen from the Wings: Luise Rainer. My Mother, The Journey

There’s an apocryphal story about the first time director Alfred Hitchcock was nominated for an Oscar (for 1940’s Rebecca).  He hadn’t planned on attending the ceremony—in fact, he and wife Alma Reville spent most of that afternoon on the tennis court.  Yet the Hitchcocks thought it might be a lark to show up for the…

“Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in…”

I mentioned on the blog back in February that circumstances were shaping up for another eBay DVD liquidation sale here at Rancho Yesteryear—what I have facetiously decided to call “The Great DVD Purge of 2019.”  I had one or two members of the TDOY faithful ask me about it further on Facebook, and while I…