20th Annual Noir City: Hollywood The series is chockablock with great pictures including this tidy midweek double: The droll and popular radio and television character Sgt. Joe Friday (Jack Webb) made his way to the big screen in Dragnet (1954), as he and partner Frank Smith (Ben Alexander) investigate...
Family Flicks Teenagers Scott Baio and Jodie Foster gave new meaning to baby-faced gangsters and molls in Bugsy Malone, the 1976 kid-friendly mobster musical written and directed by Alan Parker. Score by Paul Williams. UCLA Film & Television Archive, Billy Wilder Theatre, Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire...
One hundred years ago, the United States entered World War I, the first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded, and Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin were among those who ruled the silent silver screen. On Aug. 6, 1917, Robert Charles Duran Mitchum was born, the son of an Irish-Scottish railroad worker and...
It was the ’80s, so the films of 1987 naturally had big stars, big hair and big soundtracks. The year’s most popular movie, however improbably, was a remake of a French comedy, “Three Men and a Baby,” starring Steve Guttenberg, Tom Selleck and Ted Danson, and directed by Leonard Nimoy. It beat...
Actor Robert Mitchum broke into Hollywood doing Hopalong Cassidy westerns in the early 1940s. He moved up quickly, appearing in war pictures such as “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo” and “The Story G.I. Joe,” earning an Oscar nomination for the latter, his sole acknowledgment by the academy. Neither...
“Now here’s something we hope you’ll really like!” “Santie Claus, why? Why are you taking our Christmas tree? Why?” “My name is Talky Tina, and I’m going to kill you.” By invoking just a few words, you can hear the voice — or rather, the voices — of June Foray. Welcome to the latest edition of...
On Aug. 6, 100 years ago, Robert Mitchum was born in Bridgeport, Conn., though he once claimed he didn’t have a hometown. Humble beginnings led to several trips west, at least one in a boxcar, before he found stardom in Hollywood as one of its most iconic mid-century leading men. The actor, who...
A friend and I were standing on a corner waiting for the light to change, talking about the FX series “Feud.” “Isn’t it great,” he said, “how much it winds up on Joan Crawford’s side?” Yes, but no, I started to reply, but before I could we crossed and the conversation turned away. I wondered if...
It's a time when television is all the rage, when what's being done on the small screen is the envy of Hollywood. It's a time like today, only it's not. That time was the 1950s, when anthology shows like “Playhouse 90,” “Studio One,” “The Elgin Hour” and “Goodyear Television Playhouse” ran original...
To Jamie Lee Curtis, “the Chinese Theatre humanized, in the hand and footprints, the famous. It wasn’t a glossy picture that seemed unattainable, but something human and tangible.” To Carol Burnett, it was the place her grandmother flagged down Linda Darnell for an autograph — and little Carol...
On screen, Kirk Douglas was a legendary tough guy. But in his real life he wasn’t afraid to express his emotions, especially to his wife, Anne. That sensitive side is on display in the book “Kirk and Anne: Letters of Love, Laughter, and a Lifetime in Hollywood,” which comes out next week. For example,...
Jean Rouverol, who died Friday at age 100, was well acquainted with how the blacklist era divided Hollywood. An actress-turned-screenwriter, she and her screenwriter husband, Hugo Butler, were targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee and went into exile with their children for 13...