Filed under: cinema, classic movies, entertainment, film, hollywood, movies, nostalgia | Tags: musicals; dance; hollywood; gene kelly; cyd charisse; fred astaire; audrey hepburn; judy garland; tab hunter; gwen verdon; damn yankees; funny face; a star is born; the band wagon; singin' in the rain
Yes, I know it’s a symptom of my having been born in the wrong era, but there’s something about the red orange cigarette glow of a bohemian café in the 50s that drives me wild. Not that I by any means intend to romanticize a lifestyle that could lead to a chronic pulmonary disease, but … give me a crowded café, black turtlenecks, a sexy saxophone and a single malt whisky and I’m a happy camper. The deeply brooding reds and oranges and blues and blacks (with a splatter of pink and green thrown in here and there) seem to melt into each other in the heat of the cigarettes and stage lights. And the later the hour, the easier it is to believe that anything is possible within its walls.
Maybe that’s why Hollywood movies in the 50s favored this setting. And given the emotions that such a mood creates, maybe that’s why out of such settings came some of the best musical moments of the decade.
And so, for no particular reason at all, I felt compelled to showcase some of my favorite, scotch-soaked smoky moments on screen:
Audrey Hepburn gets her bebop on in bohemian Paris
Tab Hunter & Gwen Verdon toast to their lost souls in Damn Yankees
Cyd Charisse & Gene Kelly do a hat trick in Singin’ in the Rain
And finally, Judy Garland slam-dunks an Arlen & Gershwin number in A Star is Born. It’s such a stunning scene that a screen shot just won’t do it justice. (And if you’ve never seen it, prepare to have your socks blown off by Miss Garland.)
Filed under: entertainment, hollywood, movies | Tags: Academy Awards; The Oscars; nominations; best picture;
1934 Academy Awards: © Bettmann/CORBIS
Ok, so this morning, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that starting with next year’s ceremony the Best Picture category will now feature 10 nominees.
Academy president Sid Ganis says “After more than six decades, the Academy is returning to some of its earlier roots, when a wider field competed for the top award of the year. The final outcome, of course, will be the same – one Best Picture winner – but the race to the finish line will feature 10, not just five, great movies from 2009.”
We have been long accustomed to a top 5 films competing for Oscar gold, but, as the Academy stated in today’s press release, “For more than a decade during the Academy’s earlier years, the Best Picture category welcomed more than five films; for nine years there were 10 nominees.” For example, in 1934, the Academy nominated no less than 11 films for its top honor: It Happened One Night, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Cleopatra, Flirtation Walk, The Gay Divorcee, Here Comes the Navy, The House of Rothschild, Imitation of Life, One Night of Love, The Thin Man, Viva Villa!, and The White Parade.
“Having 10 Best Picture nominees is going allow Academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories, but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize,” commented Ganis. “I can’t wait to see what that list of ten looks like when the nominees are announced in February.”
Ok Mr. Ganis, yes … but … gone with the wind are the 1930s and the studio system that produced such steady, solid, best-picture-worthy fare. I don’t’ know about anyone else, but these days I’d be a bit hard pressed to pick a whole ten that really merit a nomination. (Although I do hope this means Pixar will finally start getting the nods it deserves instead of being relegated to the animation category!)
Then again, this might end up being the sort of rejuvenating factor that the Academy has been so visibly scrambling for in its failing equation. Instead of thinking that remodeling the look of the awards presentation will help ratings and bolster interest (as last year’s much vaulted and much maligned show is evidence of) it appears that the Academy is doing more introspective house cleaning.
Now, if they announce that they’re axing some of the yawn-inducing special tech categories (do we really need two categories for sound?), banishing the musical numbers, revoking Ryan Seacrest’s red carpet privileges and forcing Academy members to actually watch the films they vote on, hey, then they’re on to something!
The Guardian today announced that official new stills have been released from Tim Burton’s upcoming retelling of the children’s classic Alice in Wonderland. If you’re a Burton fan like myself then you have no doubt been keenly anticipating to see exactly what the master of the delightfully frightful has done with Lewis Carroll’s mindbending masterpiece. The source material itself is definitive Burton who will no doubt explore the book’s many darkly curious corners. I don’t know about you, but when I first heard that Burton would be helming the first live-action feature film in decades (excluding the multiple memorable and not-so-memorable TV adaptations) I was given to a long “oohhhhhhhhh….” (Especially when you’ve got Johnny Depp cast as The Mad Hatter!)
And apparently, if the following stills are any indication, Burton is not going to disappoint!
Click here to view them on the Guardian’s website.
Here is a quick selection:
(these shots strongly remind me of the work of artists like Femke, Kukula, and David Stoupakis.)
Little Britain's Matt Lucas - TweedleDee & TweedleDum
production still (Photograph: Disney)
Anne Hathaway - The White Queen (Photograph: Disney)
Helena Bonham Carter - The Red Queen (Photograph: Disney)
Johnny Depp - The Mad Hatter (Photograph: Disney)
Filed under: arts, book review, classic movies, culture, film, history, hollywood, literature, movies | Tags: book review, screenwriting; hollywood screenplay; ben hecht; herman mankiewicz; f scott fitzgerald; king vidor; irving thalberg
What Happens Next: A History of American Screenwriting
By Marc Norman
Three Rivers Press
List price: $17.95
Brawling, boozing, brilliance and all manner of ballyhoo swirl around like a brandy in a snifter in this deliciously vivid, vibrant and endlessly fascinating work from Marc Norman.
F Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda running amok at Hollywood parties, stealing purses and boiling them in Sam Goldwyn’s kitchen. Irving Thalberg’s story conference with Laurence Stallings and King Vidor at Mabel Normand’s funeral mass. Nathanael West coping with writers block by hunting birds in the Republic Studio trees. David Selznick fist fighting with Charlie MacArthur. Ben Hecht scrawling obscene lipstick love messages on a passed out Herman Mankiewicz’s stomach. It’s all in there in Norman’s beautifully written, tirelessly researched and knee-slappingly entertaining history of Hollywood screenwriting. The names Robert Riskin, Anita Loos, Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, and Nunnally Johnson pop up regularly in Hollywood text—but this marks the first time the Hollywood screenwriter has a published history to call their own.
Detailing the turbulent and often downright angst-ridden history of the Hollywood scribe, What Happens Next manages to be both a serious scholarly achievement, and an irreverent page-turner. It deserves a special spot on every film fan’s bookshelf.
Filed under: cinema, classic movies, culture, entertainment, film, history, hollywood, movies, nostalgia, vintage | Tags: Fred Astaire; Ginger Rogers; Roberta; RKO; Top Hat; Swing Time; Randolph Scott; Jerome Kern; Musicals; Hollywood musicals; Fred and Ginger;
For no particular reason at all (and why else do we have blogs if not to indulge the whims of our wanton subconscious) today I remembered this scene from RKO’s 1935 film Roberta. The film was based on a smash Broadway musical with music and lyrics by the eternal Jerome Kern and although Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers are key players, Roberta isn’t a Fred & Ginger vehicle. The story focuses on the story of Irene Dunne and Randolph Scott, but it is Fred & Ginger who own each and every frame. Their on screen relationship is surprisingly earnest, which makes it even harder to understand why the film isn’t readily mentioned in the same breath as Top Hat and Swing Time and the other titles in the Astaire/Rogers canon.
In this scene, the two have rarely been better–or more organic. They are terrifically young (Ginger was only 22), spry, athletic, Astaire’s choreography is electric and they just look like they are having an absolute ball together.
Talk about infectious! These were the days when movies truly did make magic.
Filed under: cinema, classic movies, film, film review, history, hollywood, movies, nostalgia | Tags: I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang; Paul Muni; Mervyn LeRoy; 1930s
Director Mervyn LeRoy’s Filmography feels like an emotional pendulum: from fluffy escapism,(Gold Diggers of 1933) to family fantasies (The Wizard of Oz, 1939) to sand-and-sandal epics (Quo Vadis, 1951) to aisle-rolling laffers (Mister Roberts, 1955). He also happens to have made the most unforgettable social comment films of the Depression era, first with 1931’s envelope-pushing crime drama Little Caesar and then 1932’s spine-tingling I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. The film has all the earmarks of a Warner Bros production—the home of Public Enemy and Little Caesar and all the other ‘gangster’ films that put the studio squarely on the map. But I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, however, is not a gangster picture. It is a gritty, uncompromising, all out attack on America’s judicial system, made all the damning by the fact that it is a true story.
Decorated WWI vet James Allen (Paul Muni) is wrongly accused of murder and sentenced to ten years hard labor in Georgia’s chain gang system. Fueled by the gravity of the injustice, Allen escapes and makes it clear to Chicago and enters the workforce where his skills in construction bring him much success. His secret, however, is not safe: his opportunistic gal pal finds out about his past and blackmails the increasingly respectable (and wealthy) Allen into marriage. It is inevitable, of course, that Allen finds real love and his threats of divorce lead his wife to turning him over to the police. He is promptly arrested, following which a battle rages between his resident state of Illinois, and the state of Georgia. Initially, Allen is confident in the state of Illinois and is certain of his release. The public is on his side of their respected citizen and Allen voluntarily returns to Georgia to serve a 90-day term of token service in order to receive a pardon. Upon arrival, Georgia’s officials reveal their intent to make an example of Allen and he is thrown into penal barracks and his hearing is suspended.
Allen's reaction to the news his appeal has been denied.
Allen escapes, thrillingly, a second time (an escape act that many a film has tipped its hat to—most notably 1967’s Cool Hand Luke.) This time there is no re-entering the workplace. Newspapers publicize him as a convict who must be captured. Allen becomes a casualty of corruption: a criminal created by the justice system who’s only means of survival is, as the riveting, closing line of the movie proclaims, to steal. He now is a fugitive from a chain gaing. The film blacks out, leaving the viewer reeling over the blazing social indictment on the chain gang system.
"I Steal!" Allen's final words in the fading moments of the film.
Paul Muni’s James Allen has been widely acclaimed for his extraordinary realism—and any words that I could add would be merely superfluous. Muni’s power lies in the nuance of his performance—his adroit control of character makes his transformation from noble citizen to scavenging outcast entirely believable and thoroughly heartbreaking. He is simply dynamic. The film is a direct product of its time—Allen is the archetypical forgotten man—and its existence would not really have been possible if made even two years later when the movie Production Code began enforcing its puritanical strangle on creative content.
But even now, at 75 years old, this film still puts to shame most every film to come out of Hollywood daring to expose the social justice system–it is definitive social realism.
Filed under: 1920s, classic movies, history, hollywood | Tags: Cocoanut Grove; The Ambassador Hotel; Los Angeles; recipes; classic hollywood; hollywood du jour; gus arnheim; abe lyman; joan crawford; 1930s; cooking; food;
Interior of the Cocoanut Grove
Continuing on our little gastronomical tour of old Hollywood, we arrive at none other than La Grande Dame of legendary eateries: The Cocoanut Grove. Betty Goodwin states in her book Hollywood du Jour:
“The Cocoanut Grove epitomized the symbiotic relationship restaurants enjoyed with the picture colony—each enhanced the other’s reputation and basked in each other’s glow.
The fancy dress Cocoanut Grove emerged on Wilshire Blvd in an auspicious time. In the twenties, Hollywood stars were beginning to define glamour for the world, and press agents were eager to help out. The Cocoanut Grove, which looked as grand as any Ziegfield stage (indeed, its key components were taken from a Valentino movie set), provided the ideal backdrop for a photo op … In the late thirties and forties, live radio broadcasts of big band music of Freddy Martin (Mr. Cocoanut Grove) and bocalist Merv Griffin, Guy Lombardo, Phil Harris, Ozzie Nelson and Rudie Vallee spread thee restaurant’s fame from coast to coast. It was also the site of the Academy Awards presentation banquets from 1930 to 1936.”
There is a fantastic book out there (although pricey) called Are the Stars Out Tonight, which provides a terrific visual history of the genesis of the Ambassador Hotel’s famous nightclub. From the “Hollywood Nights” of the 1920s where screen icons would religiously gather each Tuesday night to its popular Charleston contests (Joan Crawford was a regular winner), to its Oscar banquets and birthday parties and all manner of world-class entertainments, the book is definitely worth searching out if you want to really get a feel of what the Grove was truly like.
Poster ad forthe Cocoanut Grove's Gus Arnheim
There are also some terrific recordings available from legendary Cocoanut Grove bandleaders Abe Lyman and Gus Arnheim if you want to hear the sort of music that entertained all those starlit dancers.
And if you’d like a taste of what they dined on, here are some Cocoanut Grove recipes for you to try out. (I’ll have to take your word on the oysters as I don’t eat fish myself … but the desert is gorgeous!)
Bon Appétit!
California Oysters St. James
18 California Oysters
St. James Butter (recipe below)
Parmesan cheese
Open the oysters on the half shell. Set them in a baking dish, covering each completely with St James Butter. Sprinkle with Parmesean cheese. Bake until browned and serve very hot. Serves 3.
St James Butter
1 clove minced garlic
1 tablespoon chopped chives
1 tablespoon shallots
dadash paprika
pinch of parsley
1 drop Tabasco sauce
½ green pepper, diced
¼ pound salted butter at room temperature.
Combine garlic, chives, shallots, paprika, parsley, Tabasco and pepper. Blend into softened butter.
California Figs Romanoff
1 dozen ripe figs, cut in quarters
curacao, to taste
1 quart vanilla ice cream, very soft
1 pint whipped cream
dash nutmeg
Place figs in a serving bowl. Add a slight flavoring of curacao to taste. In another bowl, thoroughly mix vanilla ice cream with well-sweetened whipped cream. Pour over figs. Sprinkle with nutmeg and refrigerate. Serve very cold. Serves 6. (Strawberries can be substituted in lieu of nutmeg.)
Cocoanut Grove Cocktail
2 ounces dry gin
½ ounce maraschino liquer
dash lime juice
dash grenadine
Shake ingredients into cracked ice, strain and serve.
Filed under: cinema, classic movies, film, hollywood, vintage | Tags: classic hollywood cocktails; the thin man; nick charles; nora charles; nick and nora; charlie chaplin; marlene dietrich; jean harlow; greta garbo; douglas fairbanks; mary pickford; ginger rogers; roy, cocktail recipes
Nick & Nora Charles
Gosh, all this talk about classic Hollywood fare has me wee bit thirsty! So I thought I’d revisit our an earlier post which featured a list of to-die-for cocktails that take their name from screen icons.
(Might I recommend the Greta Garbo? It’s truly fabulous, dah-lings.)
Happy mixing!
From The Guardian’s David Parkinson:
“William Powell and Myrna Loy knocked back Knickerbockers in The Thin Man (1934). Katharine Hepburn sipped a Kir Royale in The Philadelphia Story (1940). Humph drowned his sorrows in Singapore Slings in Casablanca (1942). Hollywood cocktails have always smacked of glamour and good taste. Billy Wilder tried to prove otherwise by having Ray Milland recklessly slug back the Rusty Nails in The Lost Weekend (1945) and Tom Cruise discovered that it’s possible to get shaken and stirred while coping with happy hour in Cocktail (1988).
But the link between cinema and cocktails remains strong and this party season you may find yourself sampling such novelties as the Departini, the Atone-Mint and the Angelina Jolie. However, if you want a little class in your glass over the festive period, you might want to try these delights from the golden age of Hollywood.
The Charlie Chaplin
1 oz (28ml) apricot brandy
1 oz sloe gin
1 oz fresh lime juice
The recipe was invented at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. Vigorous shaking is recommended before the thick, sweet liquid can be strained into a chilled cocktail glass and garnished with lime peel.
The Marlene Dietrich
3 – 4 oz Canadian whisky
2 dashes of Angostura bitters
2 dashes of curaçao
A wedge of both lemon and orange makes the perfect topping for this zesty cocktail, which should be shaken with ice cubes and served on the rocks in a wine glass.
The Douglas Fairbanks
2 oz Plymouth gin
1 oz dry vermouth
Shake well with ice and strain into a chilled glass. A little orange peel adds dash to the finished product.
The Greta Garbo
1 oz brandy
1 oz dry vermouth
1 oz orange juice
1/4 oz grenadine
dash of crème de menthe
Garbo stuck to hard stuff in Anna Christie, but the cocktail named after her was a little more exotic. Shake the ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled highball glass.
The Jean Harlow
2 oz white rum
2 oz sweet vermouth
The Blonde Bombshell was supposedly fond of this martini created in her honour. Best served chilled, with a lemon peel garnish.
The Mary Pickford
2 oz white rum
2 oz pineapple juice
1 tsp grenadine
1 tsp maraschino liqueur
This colourful brew should be shaken with ice cubes, strained into a cocktail glass and topped with a cherry.
The Ginger Rogers
1 oz dry gin
1 oz dry vermouth
1 oz apricot brandy
4 dashes of lemon juice
Mix the ingredients well with ice and serve in a chilled cocktail glass. If sweet martini isn’t to your taste, try the alternative Ginger Rogers: a mix of champagne, ginger root and fresh lime juice.
The Roy Rogers
6 – 8 oz cola
1/4 oz grenadine
So there’s not a hint of alcohol in his cocktail, invented primarily as a boys’ equivalent to the Shirley Temple. Pour the ingredients into a tall glass filled with ice and stir well.
The Will Rogers
2 oz gin
1 oz dry vermouth
1 oz orange juice
4 dashes curacao
The Shirley Temple
6 – 8 oz ginger ale
2 oz orange juice
dash of grenadine
This is the most tinkered with Tinseltown tipple. Some versions drop the orange juice, while others replace the ginger ale with lemon-lime soda, Sprite or 7-Up. And then there are the alcoholic variations, which include the Shirley Temple Black (7-Up, kahlua and grenadine) and the Dirty Shirley (lemon-lime soda, vodka and grenadine).
The Johnny Weissmuller
1 oz gin
1 oz white rum
1 oz lemon juice
1 tsp of powdered sugar
dash of grenadine
Johnny Weissmuller agreed to a clause in his Columbia contract for the Jungle Jim series that he would be fined $5,000 for every pound he was overweight. He probably wouldn’t have much quaffed this tropical martini, then.
The Mae West
3 – 4 oz brandy
1 egg yolk
1 tsp powdered sugar
West, who didn’t drink herself, once quipped, “Any time you got nothing to do – and lots of time to do it – come on up.” And that’s good advice for this cocktail, as it takes plenty of shaking with ice cubes to completely blend the yolk.
Filed under: film, hollywood, nostalgia, vintage | Tags: classic hollywood; hollywood lost; ansel adams los angeles;, food; recipes; The Brown Derby; Original Cobb Salad Recipe; Brown Derby recipes; Hollywood restaurants;
The Brown Derby, c. 1941. photo by Ansel Adams
Betty Goodwin’s Lost Recipes of Legendary Hollywood Haunts is now an ear-marked, food-stained, go-to mainstay in my (admittedly scant) cookbook collection. “Since the twenties,” she writes, ” many of the community’s most legendary restaurants sprung up as colorfully as the larger-than-life personalities who frequented them. The tales behind the owners themselves (often rags-to-riches stories) rivaled the plots of any films…” And so Goodwin supplies both the stories and the recipes that made such Hollywood haunts as The Brown Derby, La Rue and Perino’s, ubiquitous in Hollywood lore. Every last one of the 18 restaurants found in Goodwin’s book have been gone at least twenty years (survivors like Musso and Franks and The Formosa are left out) so if you want to actually dine the way the stars did … get out your oven mits and cocktail glasses.
I’ve decided to start posting some of these recipes for your culinary delight, and it seems only fitting to start out with one of the most famous recipes to emerge from a legendary Hollywood watering hole: The Brown Derby’s Cobb Salad (So named after Mr. Robert Cobb took over ownership of the Derby in 1934).
1/2 head of iceberg lettuce
1/2 bunch of watercress
1 small bunch of chicory
1/2 head romaine
2 medium tomatoes, peeled
2 breasts of boiled roasting chicken
6 strips crisp bacon
1 avocado
3 hard-boiled eggs
2 tablespoons chopped chives
1/2 cup crumbled imported Roquefort Cheese
1 cup Brown Derby Old-Fashioned French Dressing (Dressing recipe found below.)
Cut finely lettuce, watercress, chicory and romaine and arrange in salad bowl. Cut tomatoes in half, remove seeds, dice finely aand arrange over top of chopped greens. Dice breasts of chicken and arrange over top of chopped greens. Chop bacon finely and sprinkle over salad. Cut avocado in small pieces and arrange around the edge of the salad. Decorate the salad by sprinkling over the top the chopped eggs, chopped chives and grated cheese. Just before serving, mix salad thoroughly with Brown Derby french dressing. Serves 4 to 6.
(Note: I’m a vegetarian myself, so when I made this I nixed the chicken for some portobello mushrooms and it was scrumdidlyumptious!)
Brown Derby Old-Fashioned French Dressing
1 cup water
1 cup red wine vinegar
juice of 1/2 lemon
2 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon English mustard
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 cup olive oil
3 cups salad (vegetable) oil
Blend together all ingredients except oils. Then add olive and salad oils and mix well again. Chill. Shake before serving. Makes about 1 1/2 quarts. This dressing keeps well in the refrigerator. Can be made and stored in a 2 quart Mason jar.
(to complete the dining experience, I recommend put on a good scratchy record–for those of you out there who still have them. Or at least a Billie CD. ;)
Filed under: 1920s, cinema, classic movies, entertainment, film, history, hollywood, movies, preservation, vintage | Tags: nitrate film; film preservation; douglas fairbanks; billie dove; the black pirate; ramon navarro; ben hur; lon chaney; the phantom of the opera; anna may wong;, technicolor; 2 strip technicolor; 3 strip technicolor; the aviator; martin scorsese;
Not long ago I was watching Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, which I’ve watched multiple times—not because I feel it is necessarily a great film, but because few modern films have so accurately pinpointed the look and feel of early Hollywood. A friend of mine was watching it with me and suddenly she shouted out in horror: “Eew! Gross! His peas are blue!”
Howard Hughes' dinner in The Aviator
Yep. And I like ‘em that way.
Scorsese had done a near flawless job of recreating the old Technicolor “two strip” color process that so aptly coincided with the setting of the scene: Hollywood, circa 1930. The process was actually called “Subtractive Two-Color Dye Transfer Print,” (often referred to, albeit incorrectly, as “two strip”) and was used between 1927 and 1933. It was a marked improvement on the previous “Subtractive Cement” print procedure wherein film matrices were literally bathed in dye and cemented back-to-back to the original for printing. Starting in 1927, the wizards at Technicolor (namely Herbert Kalmus) developed a technique for matrices to be optically generated from the actual camera negative. According to the extensive website The Widescreen Museum: “[the new process] used the matrices to transfer the dye to a specially prepared clear base film. The groundbreaking dye transfer process won substantial acclaim and Technicolor’s output increased markedly from 1928 through 1930.”
It is this process that Scorsese had his special effects team employ to recreate the warm dreaminess of early movie color in The Aviator. Scorsese’s film has a fantastic special effects website where it describes the technique more succinctly than my non-technical brain ever could: “Natural skin tone was achieved by filming two black and white strips of film (with a red and green filter on the lens) and later adding Yellow dye to the resulting Cyan and Magenta printing matrices. The yellow dye makes up for the lack of yellow color found in skin tone pigment but ultimately can not reproduce yellow or any shade or variation of blue (as a result of the missing blue layer.) The resulting matrices appear orange and a warmer version of cyan more than the normal magenta and cyan found in the later three color process. This look creates an odd but pleasing hand-painted look where faces appear normal and green takes on a blue-green quality while the sky and all things blue appear cyan.”
Like peas!
Here’s how Scorsese’s crew did it in 2004:
The Process
The Result
Here’s how Kalmus did it in 1927:
Original System Example, Courtesy Widescreen Museum.
Result: Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929)
Some of the earlier subtractive color systems, namely from 1922-1926, produced some truly eye-popping moments in some of the era’s best silent films:
Anna May Wong in The Toll of the Sea, 1922
Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera, 1925
Ramon Navarro in Ben-Hur, 1925
Betty Bronson in Ben-Hur, 1925
Billie Dove and Douglas Fairbanks in The Black Pirate, 1926
