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Loretta Young films as TCM celebrates her 102nd birthday (photo: Loretta Young ca. 1935) Loretta Young would have turned 102 years old today. Turner Classic Movies is celebrating the birthday of the Salt Lake City-born, Academy Award-winning actress today, January 6, 2015, with no less than ten Loretta Young films, most of them released by Warner Bros. in the early '30s. Young, who began her film career in a bit part in the 1927 Colleen Moore star vehicle Her Wild Oat, remained a Warners contract player from the late '20s up until 1933. (See also: "Loretta Young Movies.") Now, ten Loretta Young films on one day may sound like a lot, but one should remember that most Warner Bros. -- in fact, most Hollywood -- releases of the late '20s and early '30s were either B Movies or programmers. The latter were relatively short (usually 60 to 75 minutes) feature films starring A (or B+) performers,...

Two-thirds of the way along The Road to Singapore (1931)—not the Hope and Crosby entry, but one of those tropical-hell melodramas that proliferated like exotic weeds in the early thirties—comes this sequence that happens to travel between the Camera Moves (this would be #7) and Reverses (#3) series. Restless wife Doris Kenyon has just rebuffed local lothario William Powell; they've retired to their respective bungalows, but “there’s no use trying to sleep with those drums going.” So the camera snakes across the jungle, performing a series of switchbacks between live action and papier-mâché landscape to arrive at a long-distance eye-lock that signals the inevitable....

William Wyler was one of the greatest film directors Hollywood — or any other film industry — has ever produced. Today, Wyler lacks the following of Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Frank Capra, or even Howard Hawks most likely because, unlike Hitchcock, Ford, or Capra (and to a lesser extent Hawks), Wyler never focused on a particular genre, while his films were hardly as male-centered as those of the aforementioned four directors. Dumb but true: Films about women and their issues tend to be perceived as inferior to those about men — especially tough men — and their issues. The German-born Wyler (1902, in Alsace, now part of France) immigrated to the United States in his late teens. Following a stint at Universal's New York office, he moved to Hollywood and by the mid-'20s was directing Western shorts. His ascent was quick; by 1929 Wyler was directing Universal's top female star, Laura La Plante in the...

There aren't many superstars like Doris Day still alive. There are even fewer around who manage to trouble the midweek charts with their billionth studio album in their in their 88th year but that's just what Miss Day has done. To mark the release of her new record My Heart (a compilation of previously unreleased recordings produced by her late son Terry Melcher) we've had a root around and grabbed ten fast facts about the music and movie icon. 1. Named after silent movie star Doris Kenyon, Doris Day was born Doris Mary Ann Von Kapplehoff to mum Alma Sophia Welz and music teacher dad William in Cincinnati, Ohio, on April 3, 1924. 2. It was big band leader Barney Rapp who convinced her to change her surname, inspired by the song 'Day After Day' which she sang with the group. Apparently, Doris was never too keen on the moniker, thinking it made (more...

The Great White Trail (1917) Direction: Leopold Wharton and Theodore Wharton Screenplay: Gardner Hunting and Leopold Wharton Cast: Doris Kenyon, Paul Gordon, Richard Stewart, Thomas Holding, Louise Hotaling, Hans Roberts, Edgar Davenport   Some films have "everything except the kitchen sink" as the saying goes. Well, the 1917 melodrama The Great White Trail has a plot that has everything and about three kitchen sinks as well, as it briskly makes its way from one improbable situation after another before everything is happily resolved in the final reel. Doris Kenyon plays a happy young wife and mother. When her irresponsible brother appeals to her for help, her husband (Paul Gordon) misunderstands the situation, believing her to be unfaithful. He turns her out of the [...]...