Orson Welles, Mary Wickes, and Too Much Johnson

You know how sometimes you read something, and then something tangentially related to what you’ve only recently finished reading pops up somewhere, and you think, “My, that’s an odd coincidence?” That was the feeling I had earlier when I caught sight of an LA Times article entitled, “Long-lost early Orson Welles film ‘Too Much Johnson’ recovered.” A…

Gaslight(s).

  In the early 1940s, two different film versions of Patrick Hamilton’s play Angel Street were produced. The first version was released in 1940 and titled Gaslight. The second version of this film, which kept the same title, was released just four years later. Although both films were based on the same play and follow…

“You even have to murder a man politely!”

Sometimes, a film comes along that seems to think of itself as far cleverer than it may actually be. I find this to be particularly true when considering some of the more popular films to come out of the past decade; ever since 90s hits like The Usual Suspects (1995) and The Sixth Sense (1999) delighted many viewers…

Ginger and Shirley and Christmas … Oh, My!

This post is my contribution to the “Dueling Divas” blogathon hosted by Backlots. Go check out the other great entries that have been posted over the past three days! Arguably, the two biggest dancing female stars of the 1930s–at least on the silver screen–were a sharp-tongued witty dame with legs to there, and a precocious,…