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Celebrate the Golden Age of the Silver Screen!
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JANUARY 5
MY FAVORITE WIFE
Seven years after his wife disappears, Cary Grant remarries -- the same day she returns, rescued from a desert island. How can he explain Irene Dunne to his new wife? And how can Irene explain hunky Randolph Scott, who kept her company on the island? "One of those comedies with a glow on it."-- The New Republic. 1940
"How long does it take to tell a woman, 'My wife's come back'? I can say it in two seconds. 'My-wife's-come-back.' You've had two days." -- Irene Dunne being impatient with Cary Grant
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Cary Grant wants Randolph Scott to stay away from Irene Dunne
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FYI
Leo McCarey co-wrote this comedy. He knew what he was doing -- he had directed the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup, and Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in their previous pairing in The Awful Truth. Grant and Dunne made one more movie together: the weeper Penny Serenade, in 1941. It's no coincidence that the family name is Arden in this story. The plotline is taken from Tennyson's poem "Enoch Arden," about a sailor who returns home after being shipwrecked on a desert island -- and finds his wife remarried. Hollywood has used this theme several times, including in the 1964 remake (Move Over, Darling) with Doris Day, James Garner, Chuck Connors, and Polly Bergen.
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FEBRUARY 2
PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
Obsessed with a lovely Paris Opera singer, disfigured madman Lon Chaney drags her to his lair beneath the opera house. Her fascination with the forbidden -- the face behind the mask - leads to chaos and murder. Silent, with live piano music. "One of the greatest of all silent films... chillingly atmospheric... a tour de force performance."-TLA.1925 "Feast your eyes! Glut your soul on my accursed ugliness!"--The doomed Erik to Christine (Mary Philbin)... who finally knows what he looks like.
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Close your eyes and surrender to your darkest dreams--Lon Chaney!
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FYI
No, it wasn't the first horror movie. And Chaney made it toward the end of his career. But it was the first Phantom, the first of endless reiterations. Indeed, Andrew Lloyd Webber's Broadway production is still going. "The Opera ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed, a creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the box-keepers, the cloak-room attendants or the concierge. Yes, he existed in flesh and blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom; that is to say, of a spectral shade."--Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera, 1911 Oh, we love those chills!
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MARCH 1
42nd STREET
Everyone's anxious on Broadway. Their show's got to be good, got to. Because the alternative's the street - naughty, gaudy, bawdy, sporty, 42nd Street. Delight in the dancin' feet of Ginger Rogers and Ruby Keeler. "The backstage musical par excellence, the grand-daddy of them all... extravagant musical numbers."-greatestfilms.org. 1933 "All right, now I'm through. But you keep your feet on the ground and your head on those shoulders of yours and go out, and Sawyer, you're going out a youngster but you've got to come back a star!"-- These words weren't cliches when Warner Baxter first said them to Ruby Keeler
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Warner Baxter is a heartless taskmaster
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FYI
This movie slipped in before the Hayes Office exerted its influence over Hollywood. So we have Ginger Rogers' Anytime Annie -- a name that means exactly what you think it means -- and Guy Kibbee's obviously lascivious sugar daddy. Plus, keep an eye on all those shady, big-city, back-alley goings-on during the last big production number. And speaking of big production numbers -- Lloyd Bacon is listed as director, but nobody talks about him when this movie is mentioned. Busby Berkeley is the legendary choreographer responsible for the buzz the picture has generated over the years. The numbers are typical of his work -- crowded, elaborate, stunning, and lavish. Indeed, after 42nd Street, they only became more elaborate. "In an era of breadlines, depression, and wars, I tried to help peope get away from all the misery...to turn their minds to something else. I wanted to make people happy, if only for an hour." -- Busby Berkeley. And his method? Legs. Lots and lots of legs.
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APRIL 5
KEY LARGO
WWII veteran Humphrey Bogart thought the war against tyranny had ended. But his fight isn't over yet. As a hurricane closes in on this Florida hotel, Bogie and Lauren Bacall confront a gang of thugs led by sinister Edward G. Robinson. "Exceedingly well acted... well worth watching... inventive and original."--James Agee. 1948 "When your head says one thing and your whole life says another, your head always loses."--Bogart giving in to the idea of heroism when it's called for
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Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart team up against a tyrant
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FYI
Bogart plays Bogart in this movie, and Bacall plays Bacall, and Lionel Barrymore as her father plays Lionel Barrymore. But Edward G. Robinson? Of the four stars in this movie, he's the chameleon. Yes, he rose to prominence in the thirties as the quintessential Warner's criminal, but then he branched out. He's returned to that role here, and you can't take your eyes off him. It's as if he had done nothing else for 17 years but play bad guys, since his stirring Rico in Little Caesar in 1931. This is the fourth movie pairing for Bogart and Bacall, married now for four years; and the fourth of seven movies Bogart and director John Huston made together.
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