Stiff Competition!

 Cary Grant

Harold Lloyd

Table Talk!

Carole Lombard and Clark Gable

Frank Sinatra and Walter Pidgeon

Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner

Leslie Howard, Gary Cooper and Charles Farrell

Helen Hayes, Claudette Colbert and Ruth Gordon

Fay Wray and Cary Grant

George and Gracie Burns with Jane Wyman and Ronald Reagan

Susan Hayward and Ingrid Bergman

Tonight on TCM!

Merchant Ivory- who knew I was such a fan? I have seen all but one in the line-up tonight!

The Remains of the Day (1993)

 Howards End (1992)

A Room With a View (1985)
Maurice (1987)

TCM Oscar Party

This past weekend I held my second annual TCM Oscar party! Thanks to the lovely folks at YouCast, I received another party package to help me celebrate. 

This year we watched one of my all-time favorites, Bringing Up Baby (1938). If you haven't seen this gem of a movie, then you haven't seen Katharine Hepburn or Cary Grant at what I consider their very best together. With the usual Howard Hawks fast-paced dialogue and witty zingers, you're not sitting down to a relaxing movie but instead, a whirlwind of accidental adventure and high comedy. Never a dull moment, Hepburn wins her man with the help of a leopard named Baby.
Though it won no Oscars, Bringing Up Baby is an awesome film and I totally recommend it to all. 

I got this lovely little gem as a birthday gift!

And...scene! Oscar Party Pack Giveaway! {CLOSED}

Hello!

Well, it's that wonderful time of year again! Everyone is getting geared up for the Academy Awards ceremony and who better to tell the history of this wonderful award than TCM with host Robert Osborne, a published authority on the subject? If you haven't done so already, check out TCM for their wonderful line-up of Academy nominated films and stars while testing your classic cinema knowledge with a sixty-six question trivia quiz.

Last year I hosted a screening party  in order to get good use out of my TCM Oscar Party Pack and this year I have decided to do the same. Like last year, I will be screening a film that was not nominated for an Academy Award but I personally feel should have. This year I have chosen to screen a film close to my heart, Bringing Up Baby. This movie is jam-packed with hilarity, there is rarely a slow or unfunny moment in the entire film. With Howard Hawks usual tendency towards speedy dialogue, Hepburn and Grant pop out some real zingers. I loved this film growing up mostly because of Baby. I wanted a leopard of my very own for years but settled quite happily for my Blue Russian, Sable. As I grew and watched the film again and again, it became less about Baby (though I still love her) and more about the impossible, magical, wonderful interactions between Grant and Hepburn.
Though it won no Oscars, Bringing Up Baby is an awesome film and I totally recommend it to all.

Now, on to the giveaway!! I have been offered not only one TCM Oscar Party Pack but two. One of which I can give away! So I have decided, keeping within the TCM theme of Oscar trivia, to create a trivia quiz of my own in relation to the director and two stars of Bringing Up Baby. Whoever answers each question accurately will win, if there are two or more correct answers I will draw names from a hat. Due to time constraints this contest will close at 5PM on Sunday February 6th with the winner being announced on Monday.

The party pack will be similar to the one I received last year:

Trivia Quiz:

1. Howard Hawks was nominated for Best Director only once in his career. What was the name and year of the film?


2. How many times was Cary Grant nominated for Best Actor? What were the names and years of the films?


3. What are the names of the eight films that Katharine Hepburn was nominated Best Actress for but did not win?

4. Academy Award-wise, how are Hawks and Grant similar?


5. How many Academy Award Ceremonies did Hepburn attend?

Good Luck!!

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)



Merrily We Go To Hell (1932)

**I am moving into 1932 and skipping over Fredric March's first Academy Award winning film, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Halloween is around the corner and I am saving the most popular versions: Barrymore, March, and Tracy as a treat.




Jerry Corbett (Fredric March) never quite got over stage actress Claire Hempstead (Adrianne Allen). When he meets Joan Prentiss (Sylvia Sidney) at a house party, he’s drunk and gives every indication that he’s normally so. But he let’s Joan know he thinks she’s “swell”. Despite several indications that Jerry is not at all ready for marriage: he admits that Claire, his first love, is someone he still thinks of from time to time, he’s late to his and Joan’s first date, he drunkenly passed out before making it to their engagement party, and he lost Joan’s wedding ring, secretly replacing it with a bottle opener at the ceremony, Joan is head- over -heels for him and willing to be the person to reform him.
After they are married, Jerry dutifully goes on the wagon and though it takes time, he eventually writes a successful play that will be produced in New York. Slotted for the leading role is none other than the Claire Hempstead who unconsciously starts Jerry’s drinking again by handing him her drink as she points out what she would like changed in the script. Joan pitifully looks on as he sips away. Come the opening night of the play, Jerry is all but panting for Claire and when Joan arrives backstage to congratulate him after the successful first run, Jerry’s tanked.
Instead of bringing home the cast as Jerry said he would, he stays out late while Claire and her disapproving father wait for his arrival. When he does arrive, he’s being carried by his faithful friend Buck (Skeets Gallagher). When Joan is trying to help him out of his clothes, he keeps murmuring the name Claire. Joan’s father tries to get her to leave but she refuses. Instead she gets drunk for the first time to see why Jerry thinks it’s so great. When Jerry comes to and receives a phone call from Claire, he tells her he desperately wants to see her, but he won’t. When he confronts a drunken Joan, he begs her to bar him from going to Claire’s but Joan opens the door and kicks him out.
A repentant Jerry shows up the next day expecting Joan to be gone. But Joan has other plans. She’s going to be the modern wife with all the privileges Jerry has. While Jerry drunkenly enjoys his freedom, you can tell Joan is still miserable. When she finds out she is pregnant, she tries to tell Jerry but he won’t listen and so she leaves- letting him know that all she wanted was for him to love her like she loved him.
The moment Joan is gone Jerry realizes he loves her. He kicks Claire out and goes on the wagon for good. He attempts for months to reach Joan but her father cuts off any connection. When he hears that Joan is pregnant and going into labor, he rushes to the hospital to find the baby has died and Joan asking for him. The movie ends with Jerry pledging his devotion.

Bottle opener in lieu of the wedding ring, always a sure sign of smooth sailing ahead!

Though there were many opportunities for this movie to stray towards the melodramatic, it refrains, thankfully. Sydney and March play their parts magnificently, allowing me to despise Jerry for what he does to Joan but making himself totally redeemable. Sydney, in turn, displays a wonderful inner strength and despite constantly being let down by Jerry she takes it all in stride with no dreaded histrionics. Add to this the delightful addition of tap dancing Skeet Gallagher and all Jerry’s drunken cronies- including a pre-fame Cary Grant, the movie is quite engrossing.

Camera Shot!

Charlie Chaplin most likely on the set of The Gold Rush (1925)

Gary Cooper, Esther Ralston, and Clara Bow on set of Children of Divorce (1927)

Joan Crawford (set unknown)

A very handsome Cary Grant on set of Father Goose (1964)

Harold Lloyd on set of A Sailor-Made Man (1921)

Greta Garbo (set unknown)

Edmund Lowe on set of Dressed to Kill (1928)

Tonight on TCM! Ethel Barrymore!

Stars and Cars

Norma Shearer

Clark Gable

Helen Twelvetrees

Basil Rathbone

Jean Harlow

Cary Grant

Speakeasy: Bogie and Lombard

Camera Shot!

The Bride Came C.O.D.

Suspicion

Till We Meet Again

Now Voyager

Strange Interlude

North by Northwest

A Man's Castle

Tonight on TCM!

The Pink Panther (1964) In the first Inspector Clouseau film, the bumbling French police detective tries to stop a notorious jewel thief from nabbing a princess' diamond.Cast: David Niven, Peter Sellers, Capucine, Robert Wagner Dir: Blake Edwards