Directed by Edward Buzzell. Screenplay by George Oppenheimer and Harry Ruskin, from a book by Erich Kästner. Frank Morgan is Mr. Rudolph Tobler, a business magnate who is the principle owner of – among many other companies – Tobler Soap. Mr. Tobler’s hobbies include trading postage stamps with bell boys, playing ping pong, eating poorly, […]
Directed by Jonathan Demme. Written by E. Max Frye. Once upon a time, Charlie Driggs (Jeff Daniels) – a straitlaced, suit-wearing, married-with-kids bank man who recently has been promoted from Regional Manager to Vice President (though he does not yet have the updated business cards to prove it) – walks out of a NYC corner […]
Directed by Vincent Sherman. Original screenplay by David Goodis & James Gunn. “Our story,” the film’s voiceover narration announces, straight away, “takes place in Southern California. The problem with which it deals belongs not to any one city, town, or country – but is of our times.” *Sigh.* Okay, Mr. Narrator. Whatever you say. Ann […]
Directed by Michael Curtiz…as well as an uncredited William Wellman. Wellman directed the first, complete version of this film – only to have the studio (and/or Jack Warner) request that all of the scenes featuring George Blackwood be re-shot with Johnny Mack Brown, instead. Wellman’s schedule made his direction of the re-shoots impossible – leading […]
Directed by Alan Crosland. Screenplay by Bess Meredyth, titles (uncreditedly) by Walter Anthony & Maude Fulton. Silent…however, this film was made and released with a synchronized Vitaphone musical score – and stands as the first-ever feature film to do so. The backing score is/was performed by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and was (uncreditedly) composed […]
Directed by Alfred L. Werker. Screenplay by Dale Van Every, Oliver H.P. Garrett, & Roy Huggins, from the novel “The Gaunt Woman” by Edmund Gilligan. “Foreword: When war engulfs the world, giant forces are marshaled for conflict. Smashing victories are won and heroes are heralded far and wide. Often forgotten are the small victories, the […]
Directed by Melville W. Brown. Screenplay by Carey Wilson, from the book “Private Secretary: The Story of Mary Linden” by Alan Brener Schultz. A few minutes into the film – following the opening sequence, in which Mary Linden (Mary Astor) and Ronnie Wales (Ricardo Cortez) bond over games of Blind Man’s Bluff and Truth (as […]
Directed by Peter Godfrey. Screenplay by Charles Hoffman & Catherine Turney, based on a play (“The Animal Kingdom”) by Philip Barry. Additional dialogue by Julius J. Epstein & Philip G. Epstein. Several years prior to this, the Epstein twins had, of course, picked up Oscars (alongside Howard Koch) for their work on CASABLANCA (1942). (Did […]
Directed by Frank Lloyd. Adapted for the screen by J.G. Hawks (well, that certainly seems fated), from the novel by Rafael Sabatini. Titles by Walter Anthony. Silent. I will note from the top that while I have seen the later, these-days-more-well-known version of THE SEA HAWK (that is – the one released in 1940, directed […]
Directed by George Archainbaud. Screenplay by Paul Schofield. Dialogue by Wallace Smith. This film opens with an excellent first shot, the camera closely, slowly circling a huddle of men, their backs to the lens, all standing around & questioning a woman seated at the cluster’s center. The camera finds the woman (Evelyn Brent)’s face between […]
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