Happy Birthday, Tyrone Power!

artwork by Rob Kelly

99 years ago Tyrone Edmund Power was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. 22 years after that he became a movie star and would remain one for the rest of his life – another 22 years. The biggest male star at 20^th Century Fox during the ‘30s and ‘40s, Power is remembered by most today as a charismatic leading man of extraordinary looks and resonant voice. He was also a talented and ambitious actor.

Rose of Washington Square

Today, on the 99^th anniversary of Power’s birth and the 98^th anniversary of Alice Faye’s, Turner Classic Movies will air one of their hits from the 1930s, Rose of Washington Square (1939). The film, the third and last pairing of Power and Faye, was a barely veiled fiction based on Fanny Brice’s rise to fame and her tumultuous relationship with her second husband, professional gambler Nicky Arnstein (Brice was incensed and sued Fox for defamation of character - the case was settled out of court). TCM and the Fox Movie Channel are airing a broad range of Power’s films this month – click here for a schedule.

Tyrone Power’s centenary will be celebrated in 2014 with film retrospectives in his hometown as well as in New York and Los Angeles. Click here for more information. To learn more about his life and career, click here.

Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda in Jesse James (1939)...airs on TCM May 19

CAGNEY

Cagney, color by Claroscureaux

"...every time I see him work, looks to me like a bunch of firecrackers going off all at once."

Will Rogers 

During an era when impressionists, those performers whose gift it is to mimic the very famous, were a staple on television, Cagney was an essential in every repertoire. Cagney. An electric and singular presence, he is among the handful of Hollywood legends instantly identifiable by just one name. His film career began in 1930 and came to an end in 1981, but he is as revered by film buffs today as he was treasured by audiences throughout his active years. This tribute is my contribution to The Movie Projector's Cagney Blogathon. Click here for links to participating blogs.

NOIR NEWS

Robert Siodmak's The Killers (1946) screens April 17th at Noir City: Hollywood

A presentation of the American Cinematheque and the Film Noir Foundation, Noir City: Hollywood, the 15th annual Los Angeles film noir festival, is in full swing now and runs through April 21. Films screen at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood and the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica. For program and ticket information, click here.

MAD MEN 6

When Mad Men returned to the air waves (and all those second and third screens) last year, nearly 18 months had elapsed since the previous season. Die-hard fans like me barely survived the overlong wait. When the premiere date for season five was finally announced, I decided to celebrate with a month-long blog event. Sunday Night is Mad Men Night was a joint effort with four blogger friends who each assessed the award-winning series from a different point of view:

Fashion in Film Blogathon: Shanghai Express (1932)

Clive Brook and Marlene Dietrich

Between 1930 and 1935, Josef von Sternberg filmed six wondrous and surreal flights of imagination for Paramount starring Marlene Dietrich with costumes by Travis Banton. The director and Dietrich had already made their first film together, The Blue Angel (1930), for UFA in Germany and, on the heels of that film's sensational premiere in Berlin, departed for Hollywood. Von Sternberg, who was born in Austria but mostly raised in America, had worked previously with Banton in the U.S. on Underworld (1927), a groundbreaking silent crime drama.

Evelyn Brent as Feathers McCoy in Underworld

The first of the six Paramount productions was Morocco (1930), the film that made a star of Dietrich. It brought Academy Award nominations to von Sternberg, cinematographer Lee Garmes, art director Hans Dreier - and for Marlene Dietrich her one and only Best Actress nod. Morocco also introduced elements and themes that would recur in Josef von Sternberg's future Dietrich films: an enigmatic siren, besotted men, distant locales, misleading appearances, frustrated passion and the redemptive power of love. 

Beauty in Black and White - the Film Noir Art of Guy Budziak

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep

Guy Budziak is a woodcut artist whose striking high-contrast prints evoke dense and haunting images from classic noir, proto-noir and neo-noir films. My recent  Nightmare Alley blog entry featured Guy's rendering of a tantalizing moment from the film:

A Birthday Tribute to Francoise Dorleac

Francoise Dorleac, older sister of Catherine Deneuve, was born in war-ravaged Paris on the first day of spring, 71 years ago today, March 21, 1942, and lived just 25 years more.

Catherine (top) and Francoise

Her father was Maurice Dorleac, a stage and screen actor, and her mother, Renee Deneuve, was an actress who re-voiced Hollywood films in French (including Judy Garland’s in The Wizard of Oz). Both Maurice and Renee were prominent performers at the Comedie Francaise. Sister Catherine was born a year-and-a-half later, in October 1943. With their parents in the theater, acting did not seem an unusual profession to the girls. Catherine would later recall, “For us, it was a job like any other.” She and Francoise grew up sleeping in bunk beds in a shared bedroom and both would go into “the family business” at an early age. 

Francoise first performed on the stage when she was 10 and made her screen debut at 15 in the short Mesonges (1957). Later, supporting herself as a model for the house of Dior, she studied acting at the Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique. As an in-demand model and actress, Francoise led a wildly busy life from her teens to the end of her life. She appeared on stage (among her roles was "Gigi"), on TV, in magazine spreads (including Vogue) and covers, and on film. Over the seven years from 1960 – 1967 she was featured in 16 films, notably:

VINTAGE YEARS

The notion that 1939 was the greatest of all movie years has been around for so long that it's pretty much an accepted fact these days. A while ago, as I was roaming the blogosphere, I happened upon a post by Peter Bogdanovich on his Indiewire blog (appropriately called Blogdanovich) titled "The Greatest Year?"  I read on, having always respected what Mr. B has to say about films and filmmaking. He not only possesses an encyclopedic knowledge and intimate understanding of the subject, but has also made some classics of his own that I much admire - The Last Picture Show (1971), What's Up, Doc? (1972) and Paper Moon (1973).

With "The Greatest Year?" Bogdanovich looked back on one of his 1972 columns for Esquire magazine. In that article he'd selected and reviewed a great movie year of the past to illustrate his contention that films of the early '70s weren't measuring up. He zeroed in on 1939 in particular because in addition to the fact that it had been a banner year for movies, it was also the year he was born (as were Francis Coppola and William Friedkin, two other major filmmakers of the time). Not long after Bogdanovich's column appeared in Esquire, he recalled, a lengthier, more elaborate piece on the films of 1939 appeared in Life magazine written by film critic Richard Schickel. Schickel once and for all declared '39 to be the great year. The rest, as we know, is history.

CMBA Blogathon: Nightmare Alley (1947)

Woodcut print by Guy Budziak

Coney Island's first so-called "freak show" opened in 1880, but the heyday of its sideshow attractions began nearly 25 years later when Samuel W. Gumpertz opened "Lilliputia" at Dreamland, one of the site's three major amusement parks. Wildly popular with tourists, "Lilliputia" was a miniature city scaled to accommodate its 300 midget and dwarf residents. When Dreamland burned in 1911, Gumpertz built the Dreamland Circus Sideshow and traveled the world constantly seeking "freaks" (usually those with congenital anomalies) and people from exotic lands (Filipino blowgun shooters, actual "wild men" from Borneo, Ubangi women with plated lips) for his shows. In no time Gumpertz would have competition from The World Circus Freak Show, Wonderland Circus Sideshow and other copy-cat venues large and small.