March 24, 2021: That’s what I think, anyway. I wrote an essay on my little hypothesis, and the great Bright Lights Film Journal posted it today, right here. And now, in the punk tradition of short and sweet, that’s the end of my self-promotional blather on the subject.
January 31, 2021: Well, insert sigh here: I was already planning to use this Cloris Leachman photo for this post when I learned that she just died. I’m not prescient; I just know a great face, especially when it fronts a crackerjack performer, when I see it.
Anyway, my first favorite sorority gal is, of course, my daughter, who last year joined a sorority at her college despite my protestations of “Wha?” (When I was at NYU I was exactly as interested in sororities as I was in college sports, and if you’d asked me then, I would have insisted that my school had neither.) Hoping to get to the bottom of the daughter’s non-me-like interest in Greek life, I jumped at the chance to review Margaret L. Freeman’s Women of Discriminating Taste: White Sororities and the Making of American Ladyhood for the Portland Press Herald. You can read my review, which runs today, here to learn about the sort of club that wouldn’t have had me for a member anyway.
December 31, 2020: In response to an overwhelming lack of demand, I’m listing the five best books about old Hollywood that I read in 2020. They also happen to be the only books about old Hollywood that I read in 2020. They also happen to be books that I reviewed, so I’m providing links to the nice things that I wrote about them. Have I mentioned that the only thing I really want to read about is old Hollywood? Old Hollywood, old Hollywood, old Hollywood. Anyway, here’s the alphabetized list:
The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood–and America–Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb by Greg Mitchell (The New Press, July 2020)
Celeste Holm Syndrome: On Character Actors from Hollywood’s Golden Age by David Lazar (University of Nebraska Press, October 2020)
Hollywood Double Agent: The True Tale of Boris Morros, Film Producer Turned Cold War Spy by Jonathan Gill (Abrams, April 2020)
Lon Chaney Speaks by Pat Dorian (Pantheon, October 2020)
The Sun and Her Stars: Salka Viertel and Hitler’s Exiles in the Golden Age of Hollywood by Donna Rifkind (Other Press, January 2020)
December 27, 2020: Oh good: today the Portland Press Herald runs my review of a thriller set in the Bronx—it’s Fire in the Blood by Perry O’Brien—which gives me an excuse to post a photo of someone born in the Bronx, and I choose the trailblazing actress Diahann Carroll (1935–2019). Sorry, June Allyson.
December 25, 2020: Merry Christmas to me: Salon has selected my essay “‘Low Class’ Donald Trump and the Wasps: Reckoning with Vulgarity, Snobbery and the Presidency,” which they originally ran in February, as one of its Best Life Story essays of 2020 (see here). I’m honored that they picked my piece, and of course I’m always delighted to have any opportunity to trundle out a picture of Lovey and Thurston, my favorite fake Wasps.
November 19, 2020: You know how I’ve always meant to but haven’t (yet) written a book about golden-age Hollywood character actors? Well, I’ve done the next best thing: I’ve written about someone else’s book about golden-age Hollywood character actors. My review of David Lazar’s Celeste Holm Syndrome: On Character Actors from Hollywood’s Golden Age is out today in Bright Lights Film Journal (see here). Yes, Richard Deacon is in it. Guess how big a part he has?
October 25, 2020: Today in the Portland Press Herald I review Carol Goodman’s The Sea of Lost Girls (see here), which hinges on Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, which of course gives me an excuse to post a photo of Madeleine Sherwood (1922–2016), who played Abigail Williams in the original Broadway production of 1953. Sherwood, who was also an activist for civil right and feminist causes, had a good run on stage and screen (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Sweet Bird of Youth, and so on) before The Flying Nun swooped down and carried her away.
October 11, 2020:
Jessica Barry’s second thriller, Don’t Turn Around, which I review today (see here) in the Portland Press Herald, is a two-dame road trip thriller and hence much more evocative of Thelma and Louise than of All About Eve. But I didn’t really like Thelma and Louise, and I adore All About Eve, plus Don’t Turn Around is, like Eve, about a very bumpy night, so too bad: you’re getting Bette Davis.
July 26, 2020: Angela Lansbury was, of course, Broadway’s Mame, and she was, even of courser, Maine personified by Jessica Fletcher in TV’s Murder, She Wrote. Anyone who thought that Fletcher was entirely too personable might appreciate fellow small-town-Maine widow-sleuth Maggie Carpenter of Jessica Barry’s debut thriller, Freefall, which I review today (see here) in the Portland Press Herald. As for Mame, according to TCM’s Robert Osborne (start at 19:25), Lansbury wanted to star in the 1974 remake of the 1958 Rosalind Russell film, but Lucille Ball got the job. The 1974 version was a box office bomb and a critical laughingstock. Stop smiling, Angie!
May 10, 2020: Two reasons. One: I love James Garner. Two: He played Philip Marlowe in 1969’s marvelous shambles Marlowe, which was based on Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister, which provides the epigraph for Port City Crossfire by Gerry Boyle, which I review today (see here) in the Portland Press Herald. Try to keep up, would you?