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John Wayne was riding remarkably high in the saddle in the early 1950s, knocking out one box office hit after another, when he decided to diversify his Hollywood profile by producing movies. So in 1952, the star of "Red River," "Sands of Iwo Jima," and "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" hooked up with his longtime showbiz pal Robert Fellows, and together they founded Wayne-Fellows Productions. Wayne was picky about the people with whom he made movies, but Fellows more than earned his trust. According to Scott Eyman's "John Wayne: The Life and Legend," the Duke once said of Fellows, "What Bob doesn't know about the business isn't worth knowing."

Their first film together was the politically ignorant turkey "Big Jim McClain," which starred Wayne as a heroic special investigator for the House Un-American Activities Committee (Huac). In 1953, they released two movies,...

Charles Kimbrough, the Emmy-nominated actor best known for his splendid decade-long portrayal of staid network anchor Jim Dial on Murphy Brown, has died. He was 86.

Kimbrough died Jan. 11 in Culver City, his son, John Kimbrough, told The New York Times.

A veteran of the stage, Kimbrough received a Tony Award nomination in 1971 for best featured actor in a musical for playing Harry in the original production of Stephen Sondheim’s Company. He then appeared as two characters in another acclaimed Sondheim musical, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Sunday in the Park With George, which debuted in 1984.

Kimbrough also starred in 1995 in the original off-Broadway production of the A.R. Gurney comedy Sylvia opposite Sarah Jessica Parker and appeared on the Great White Way in Candide, Same Time, Next Year, Accent on Youth, Hay Fever, The Merchant of Venice and, most recently, with Jim Parsons in a 2012 revival of Harvey.

The Minnesota native also...

With both title and central buddy dynamic tipping hat to “Superbad,” among other raunchy teen comedies, “Supercool” is not the kind of movie that wins prizes for originality. Nor is Finnish director Teppo Airaksinen’s first U.S.-shot, English-language project as outrageous as it thinks it is. Nonetheless, this energetic spin through high school antics redolent of everything since “Ferris Bueller” is colorful and amusing enough to entertain viewers looking for a familiar mix of bad-taste gags in a squeaky-clean suburban setting. Vertical Entertainment is releasing it to 20 U.S. theater screens as well as on-demand platforms Feb. 11.

Things commence with an over-the-top action sequence in which Neil (Jake Short) rescues classmate Summer (Madison Davenport) from the clutches of a masked maniac after she’s abducted from their school bus. But this turns out to be one more fantasy from Neil’s vivid imagination, which he channels into the...

Viavision’s second deluxe Film Noir boxed finds real variety in the film style, with entries that range from low-budget efforts to a picture filmed on location in Mexico. Richard Conte solves a notorious movie studio murder in Hollywood Story, Gig Young is a cop who considers going crooked in City that Never Sleeps, Glenn Ford dodges murderous treasure hunters in Plunder of the Sun and Steve Cochran’s cop really does go rogue in Private Hell 36.

Essential Film Noir Collection 1

Blu-ray (Region-Free)

Viavision [Imprint] 18, 19, 20, 21

1947-1957 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 327 min. / Street Date October 28, 2020 / Available from Viavision [Imprint] / 149.99

Starring: Richard Conte, Julia Adams; Gig Young, Mala Powers, Marie Windsor; Glenn Ford, Diana Lynn, Patricia Medina; Ida Lupino, Steve Cochran, Howard Duff.

Directed by William Castle, John H. Auer, John Farrow, Don Siegel

Viavision’s noir series throws a wide net, with two debuts on Blu-ray and one full debut on home video.

Kino Lorber has released three Barbara Stanwyck films in a boxed set collection. Here is the official announcement:

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This collection feature three classic films starring screen legend Barbara Stanwyck:

Internes Can’T Take Money (1937) – Young Dr. James Kildare, interning at a clinic, falls for his patient Janet Haley. The feeling is mutual, but Janet has a secret she will not divulge: She’s the widow of a bank robber who hid their daughter before he died and she is desperately trying to find the little girl. She will use anyone—including Dr. Kildare—to get her child back. The doctor’s association with gangster Hanlon, whose injuries Kildare secretly patched up, and Janet’s connection with gangster Innes (Stanley Ridges, Black Friday), who’s helping her find her daughter, bring it all to a rousing head filled with action, suspense and the unexpected!

This can’t-lose comedy is ace writer-director Billy Wilder’s first solo directing credit; he and writing partner Charles Brackett concoct a side-splitting crowdpleaser guaranteed to secure his Hollywood future. Ginger Rogers was never more adept, playing a fake 11 year-old in a farce that’s both code-iffy and censor proof; Ray Milland shines as well with the limitlessly clever and witty screenplay. And look out for Diana Lynn, the terrific teenage comedienne that Wilder found before Preston Sturges did.

The Major and the Minor

Blu-ray

Arrow Academy

1942 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 100 min. / Street Date September 24, 2019 / Available from Arrow Video / 39.95

Starring: Ginger Rogers, Ray Milland, Diana Lynn, Rita Johnson, Robert Benchley.

Cinematography: Leo Tover

Film Editor: Doane Harrison

Original Music: Robert Emmett Dolan

Written by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder from a story and a play by Fanny Kilbourne, Edward Childs Carpenter

Produced by Arthur Hornblow, Jr.

Directed by Billy Wilder

Paramount...

Billy Wilder directed Sunset Blvd. with Gloria Swanson and William Holden. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett movies Below is a list of movies on which Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder worked together as screenwriters, including efforts for which they did not receive screen credit. The Wilder-Brackett screenwriting partnership lasted from 1938 to 1949. During that time, they shared two Academy Awards for their work on The Lost Weekend (1945) and, with D.M. Marshman Jr., Sunset Blvd. (1950). More detailed information further below. Post-split years Billy Wilder would later join forces with screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond in movies such as the classic comedy Some Like It Hot (1959), the Best Picture Oscar winner The Apartment (1960), and One Two Three (1961), notable as James Cagney's last film (until a brief comeback in Milos Forman's Ragtime two decades later). Although some of these movies were quite well received, Wilder's later efforts – which also included The Seven Year Itch...

Teresa Wright: Later years (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright: From Marlon Brando to Matt Damon.") Teresa Wright and Robert Anderson were divorced in 1978. They would remain friends in the ensuing years.[1] Wright spent most of the last decade of her life in Connecticut, making only sporadic public appearances. In 1998, she could be seen with her grandson, film producer Jonah Smith, at New York's Yankee Stadium, where she threw the ceremonial first pitch.[2] Wright also became involved in the Greater New York chapter of the Als Association. (The Pride of the Yankees subject, Lou Gehrig, died of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in 1941.) The week she turned 82 in October 2000, Wright attended the 20th anniversary celebration of Somewhere in Time, where she posed for pictures with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. In March 2003, she was a guest at the 75th Academy Awards, in the segment showcasing Oscar-winning actors of the past. Two years later,...

Cary Grant movies: 'An Affair to Remember' does justice to its title (photo: Cary Grant ca. late 1940s) Cary Grant excelled at playing Cary Grant. This evening, fans of the charming, sophisticated, debonair actor -- not to be confused with the Bristol-born Archibald Leach -- can rejoice, as no less than eight Cary Grant movies are being shown on Turner Classic Movies, including a handful of his most successful and best-remembered star vehicles from the late '30s to the late '50s. (See also: "Cary Grant Classic Movies" and "Cary Grant and Randolph Scott: Gay Lovers?") The evening begins with what may well be Cary Grant's best-known film, An Affair to Remember. This 1957 romantic comedy-melodrama is unusual in that it's an even more successful remake of a previous critical and box-office hit -- the Academy Award-nominated 1939 release Love Affair -- and that it was directed...

It's a tribute worthy of Tony Soprano -- a Bada Bing stripper from the HBO show has paid her respects to James Gandolfini the only way she knows how ... by spinning around a pole in a g-string to the "Sopranos" theme song ... and it's all on video.The clip was shot last night at the real-life Bada Bing -- a place called Satin Dolls in Lodi, NJ -- and it features longtime Bada Bing veteran Diana Lynn,...

Betty Hutton movies (photo: Betty Hutton in The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, with Eddie Bracken) [See previous post: "Betty Hutton Bio: The Blonde Bombshell."] Buddy DeSylva did as promised. Betty Hutton was given a key supporting role in Victor Schertzinger’s 1942 musical comedy The Fleet’s In, starring Dorothy Lamour, William Holden, and Eddie Bracken. “Her facial grimaces, body twists and man-pummeling gymnastics take wonderfully to the screen,” enthused Pm magazine. (Hutton would have a cameo, as Hetty Button, in the 1952 remake Sailor Beware, starring Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, and Corinne Calvet.) The following year, Betty Hutton landed the second female lead in Happy Go Lucky (1943), singing Jimmy McHugh and Frank Loesser’s "Murder, He Says," and stealing the show from fellow Broadway import Mary Martin and former Warner Bros. crooner Dick Powell. She also got co-star billing opposite Bob Hope in Sidney Lanfield’s musical comedy Let’s Face It. Additionally, Paramount’s hugely successful all-star war-effort...