Stars! They're Just Like Us!

They get the works!

They fight for their right...to party! (Sorry, Beastie Boys fan)

They don't take any BS from anybody!

They feed chickens!

They flambé their own Banana Fosters! Yum!

They deal with some supremely embarrassing situations with dignity...and friends.

They sweat it out!

Tonight on TCM!

In Which We Serve (1942) Survivors of a bombed British destroyer think back on the paths that led them to war. Cast: Noel Coward, John Mills, Celia Johnson. Dir: Noel Coward, David Lean.

Through the looking glass...

Ann Sheridan

Lucille Ball

Barbara Pepper

Gloria Grahame and Lee Marvin

Carole Lombard

Cary Grant

Joan Crawford and Ruth Donnelly (?)

Tonight on TCM!

The last installment of TCM's wonderful documentary: Moguls & Movie Stars, A History of Hollywood: Fade Out, Fade In (2010)



Lil' Lip Service...

Knit It!

It takes two to make a thing go right
It takes two to make it outta sight
Knit it!

Ingrid Bergman

Greer Garson

Sylvia Sidney

Rosalind Russell

Jayne Mansfield

Katharine Hepburn

In through the front door,
Once around the back.
Peek through the window,
And off jumps Jack!
-Susan Kranz-

Audrey Hepburn

Mae Marsh

Bette Davis

Ann Sheridan

And the Queen Bee of knitting, Ms. Joan Crawford!

On the set of Reunion in France

On the set of Humoresque

On the set of Mildred Pierce

Now if I only I had one of her on the set of The Women. Reportedly while George Cukor filmed Shearer, Crawford sat on the sidelines knitting an afghan with the loudest needles available, until Shearer complained of the distraction to Cukor who then ordered Crawford back to her trailer.

Tonight on TCM!

It's Elvis' birthday and though the man could sing, I preferred he simply stuck to that. Watch his movies at your own risk. ;)

Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)

Rocky Sullivan (James Cagney) and Jerry Connolly (Pat O’Brien) grew up together in a tough part of New York. When Rocky gets caught for a crime both he and Jerry committed he advises Jerry to keep his mouth shut about confessing to the crime as well. Rocky is sent off to reform school and a future full of crime while Jerry goes straight and becomes a priest and mentor to the neighborhood kids.
As adults, Rocky and Jerry are reunited when Rocky returns to the old neighborhood looking for a safe place to stay until he can collect money owed to him from his crooked lawyer Frazier (Humphrey Bogart) and get back into his old racketeering ways. Unfortunately, Frazier isn’t so keen on letting that money go or letting Rocky get back into the business. Meanwhile, though Jerry is happy to see Rocky, he’s worried about Rocky’s influence on some of the more challenging kids of the neighborhood. When Rocky is falsely arrested and then let go through coercion from the gang he is blackmailing, Jerry takes it into his own hands to clean up the streets and the police department that’s doing shady business. Both Jerry and Frazier’s efforts lead Rocky to murder and when he is caught he’s sentenced to the chair.
Before being put to death, Jerry visits Rocky with one request- turn yellow. He doesn’t want Rocky to become a hero to the kids of the neighborhood by acting tough to the very end. Rocky refuses but as he is led toward the death chamber he suddenly begins to wail and beg to be let go.

Another picture cementing Cagney’s tough-guy image which he found a bit wearisome as he always considered himself a song-and-dance kind of man. Cagney said he was challenged in public more than once by “backyard weight lifters” who had something to prove.
Overall, the movie was another of your garden variety gangsters flicks complete with your post-code moral message. The brightest part of the movie was Cagney, who by this point was so used to playing characters of this ilk that he started to add memorable little quirks to freshen up the theme and differentiate one gangster role from another.


Side note:

Cagney: Through the years I have actually had little kids come up to me on the street and ask, “Didya do it for the father, huh?” I think looking at the film it is virtually impossible to say which course Rocky took- which is just the way I wanted it. I played it with deliberate ambiguity so that the spectator can take his choice. It seems to me it works out fine in either case. You have to decide. -Cagney by Cagney


Tonight on TCM!
The More the Merrier (1943) The World War II housing shortage brings three people together for an unlikely romance.Cast: Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea, Charles Coburn, Richard Gaines Dir: George Stevens

Torrid Zone (1940)

Tough boss Steve Case (Pat O'Brien) pulls a few underhanded tricks to keep his top man Nick Butler (Cagney) from quitting the banana business located in Central America. Complicating the plot is a nightclub singer, Lee Donley (Anne Sheridan), who Case decides needs to leave the area despite Lee needing the work. Dealing with guerilla warfare for plantation ownership and an incompetent plantation supervisor with a bored housewife, when Lee and Nick meet and hit it off, Steve’s got more than he can handle.
Torrid Zone, one of nine films featuring James Cagney and Pat O’Brien, is full of insults, quips and double entendres being thrown around at break neck speed. Add in “Oomph Girl” Ann Sheridan and warbling ole Andy Devine and you have yourself a comedy goldmine. Cagney stomping around in a floppy straw hat is comical by itself!


Lee Donley: [picking up a cigarette dropped by Gloria] I believe this is how the Chicago fire got started.
Gloria Anderson: The Chicago fire was started by a cow.
Lee Donley: History repeats itself.


Police Chief Juan Rodriguez: [arguing with Case on the phone] After a good night's sleep a man doesn't mind being shot, but during siesta? [a pause while he listens]
Police Chief Juan Rodriguez: All right, all right! Si, senor. We... we give him a permanent siesta - we shoot him right away.


Wally Davis: A house doesn't have to fall on me.
Nick Butler: It might help.


Lee Donley: [to Case] Mister, the stork that brought you must have been a vulture.


Lee Donley: [to Nick] I don't want to put you out. I'll take in washing for my room and board. Wally Davis: [slightly lasciviously] Well, I got a couple of buttons that could stand sewing. Lee Donley: [sarcastically] Shirts, I suppose.


Nick Butler: Oh, Lee, if you see Case, give him a kiss for me.
Lee Donley: Not even a foreign general would kiss that guy!


Lee Donley: Why don't you send that mind of yours out and have it dry-cleaned.
Nick Butler: What's the use? Look at the company I'm in.
Lee Donley: You won't be for long!


Lee Donley: [as Gloria enters] Here comes Malicious.
Nick Butler: Can that talk!
Lee Donley: Well, some days a girl can't make a cent!
Gloria Anderson: I don't imagine you have any trouble.
Lee Donley: Why do you walk around making noises like a lady? All a guy has to do is wink and he hits the jackpot.


Mr. Steve Case: [walking in while Lee and Nick are kissing] Necking like a couple of high school kids!
Lee Donley: [wisecracking] You interrupted a post-graduate course.


Lee Donley: [cutting off Nick's shirt so she can dress his wound] Oh did I hurt you?
Nick Butler: [sarcastically] Oh, no. How could you hurt me by sticking a scissors in my arm?


Gloria Anderson: But, Nick, aren't you going to Chicago?
Nick Butler: Sure.
Gloria Anderson: [realizing he is going with Lee, not her] Oh, I get it!
Gloria Anderson: You finally stepped down to your own level!
Lee Donley: That's still about three floors above yours!


Nick Butler: [to Lee] You and your 14 karat oomph!


Side Note:
Dubbed the “Oomph Girl” in the 1940’s by Warner Brothers for her earthy sex appeal, this was a moniker that Ann Sheridan openly disdained but eventually learned to accept.

Cagney: Because the story line of Torrid Zone was so terribly predictable, I thought that just to effect some kind of change, I'd grow a mustache. It was really a rather silly-looking thing, but at least it was inoffensive. Inoffensive, that is, to everyone except the top brass. They gave the producer of the picture, Mark hellinger, some emphatic hell about my little peccadillo. mark, a happy-go-lucky guy with a flair for high living, came to me about it.
"Jim," he said, "the boys in the front office want to know why you grew the mustache."
"What's the matter with it?" I said.
"The brass claims it takes away some of your toughness."
"They know all about that, don't they Mark? Hell, what do we want to do? Sell the public the same piece of yard-goods all the time? Let's have some variety." -Cagney by Cagney



Tonight on TCM!
Little Big Shot (1935) Small-time hoods turn nursemaid when a gangster's daughter is orphaned. Cast: Sybil Jason, Glenda Farrell, Robert Armstrong, Edward Everett Horton Dir: Michael Curtiz

Through the looking glass...the primping sessions

Gloria Swanson

Ruth Chatterton
Kay Francis
Katharine Hepburn

Betty Grable

Joan Collins and Jayne Mansfield

Ann Sothern

Ann Sheridan