Classic Links

Neighbors fight Von Trapp Hotel--San Francisco Chronicle

Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine still don’t get along?—The Independent

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John Phillip Law, 1937-2008

"I've had more kicks out of playing far-out things. It's like putting on a funny face and going out in front of people and going, 'yaaaaaa!'" –John Phillip Law in the Los Angeles Times, 1966


Good bye to John Phillip Law, the prolific actor who acted on Broadway, and in Hollywood and Italian films. He became famous in the Russians are Coming the Russians are Coming (1966), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination for most promising newcomer. He is best remembered for colorful 60’s and 70’s flicks such as Barbarella (as Pygar the blind angel, his best-known performance), Danger: Diabolik, Skidoo (all 1968) and The Love Machine (1971). He also had the “honor” of having two of his movies, Diabolik and Space Mutiny (1988), spoofed on Mystery Science Theater 3000. His brief appearance in CQ (2001), a movie which paid tribute to the colorful movies that kept him famous, showed that he was very much the same as he was when he first found fame: tall, blonde and handsome with a deep, appealing voice and striking presence.


LA Times Obituary


Death Rides A Horse at Internet Archive


Lots of great clips with Law on Deep Ape


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Classic Links

Tina Sinatra on new Frank Sinatra DVDs-- Cinematical

James Garner recovering from a minor stroke--Reuters

Now available full-length in the TCM media room, Laurel and Hardy in “A Chump at Oxford”--TCM.com

Classic Links

Groucho sightings in Seattle--Film.com

The famous Hollywood sign is threatened?--Chicago Sun Times

TCM Assembles Star-Studded 2008 Line-up of Original Specials and Festivals--The Futon Critic

RIP: Reel Important People -- April 22, 2008--Cinematical

Disney Animator Ollie Johnston Remembered--NPR Online

"Double Harness" Free on TCM

The 1933 pre-code soaper Double Harness is available for free viewing on TCM. Starring the always underrated Ann Harding and a typically pitch-perfect William Powell, it's one of the most pleasing current features of the TCM website's Media Room. After you view the flick, check out the huge library of shorts, trailers and movie clips. Quite addictive, and the player is a step above YouTube in quality if not quite up to DVD standards.

Jane Wyman 1914-2007

Jane Wyman started her film career as an ingenue, flitting in and out of celluloid parties and dancing in chorus lines. She developed her talent throughout the forties, gaining special attention as Ray Milland's sensitive girlfriend in The Lost Weekend (1945). In 1948, sge reached new heights with her performance as a deaf-mute woman in Johnny Belinda. The industry rewarded her with the Academy Award for Best Actress. As she entered middle age, she excelled as the sensible gal capable of quite unreasonable passion in the Sirk melodramas, Magnificent Obsession (1954) and All that Heaven Allows (1955). By the mid-fifties, she had moved to television, where she had her own show, Jane Wyman Presents the Fireside Theatre, for three years, in addition to appearing on several other shows. She even made her mark on the golden age of evening soaps, playing the steely matriarch of Falcon Crest throughout the eighties. Solid and dependable, but with a flirtatious charm, she has left behind a diverse and satisfying body of work.

49th Parallel (1941)

With Leslie Howard, Raymond Massey and Laurence Olvier all taking huge pay cuts to make this film “for the war effort” and Anton Walbrook donating half his salary to the International Red Cross, there’s no doubt that this World War II era film is propaganda. It is also great entertainment. A U-boat full of Nazis lands off the coast of Northern Canada and sends a small group of men out for provisions—with orders to destroy anyone who stands in their way. They take over an isolated outpost surrounded by Eskimos and soon learn by radio that their comrades have all been lost. As their numbers dwindle, they try to escape across the border to the still-neutral US, while blindly promoting their fuehrer and trampling the friendly strangers who try to help them along the way. The unusual focus on the antagonist’s story can bring up flashes of pity for these essentially brainwashed men, but their crimes are too severe to be entirely forgotten.

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