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Jerome Hellman, the producer of landmark films such as Midnight Cowboy and Coming Home has died. The Oscar winner’s wife, Elizabeth Empleton Hellman, confirmed Hellman’s May 26 passing saying simply, “we will miss him terribly.” He was 92.

Hellman’s films helped define the “New Hollywood” of the 1970s. He tended to work repeatedly with a circle of top-notch collaborators and the films Hellman produced came from iconic directors such as John Schlesinger, Hal Ashby, George Roy Hill, Irvin Kershner and Peter Weir.

That Hellman would win Best Picture for Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy in 1970 was, at the very least, improbable. Hellman was going through a tough divorce. The film was based on a little-known novel. Schlesinger didn’t think Dustin Hoffman was right to play Ratso Rizzo. But Hellman fought for the Graduate actor. Also, the film was X-rated and dealt with homosexuality, prostitution and a gritty slice of...

HBO Max made a splash earlier this month when it debuted its service with an inaugural line-up of cinema classics. From Warner Bros. crown jewels like Casablanca to major Criterion Collection gems such as 8 1/2, the bench was deep. High among these films, however, was MGM’s golden age catalogue, which included Gone with the Wind. Still, technically the most successful movie ever made, the Scarlett O’Hara epic even played on television commercials for the new streaming service.

As of Wednesday morning, however, Gone with the Wind has been removed from HBO Max with no clear indication when it might return. This move comes after astute criticism by no less than John Ridley, the Oscar winning screenwriter of 12 Years a Slave, who took to The Los Angeles Times to consider Gone with the Wind’s complicated legacy as a piece of Southern Revisionism that glorified the Antebellum South and the...

Every Friday, we’re recommending an older movie available to stream or download and worth seeing again through the lens of our current moment. We’re calling the series “Revisiting Hours” — consider this Rolling Stone’s unofficial film club. This week: Alex Pappademas on Wes Craven’s The People Under the Stairs.

In real life, the house where most of Wes Craven’s The People Under the Stairs takes place is a three-story Craftsman-style mansion in the West Adams district of Los Angeles. When the neighborhood’s well-to-do white population...

David O. Selznick’s absurdly over-cooked western epic is a great picture, even if much of it induces a kind of hypnotic, mouth-hanging-open disbelief. Is this monument to the sex appeal of Jennifer Jones, Kitsch in terrible taste, or have Selznick and his army of Hollywood talents found a new level of hyped melodramatic harmony? It certainly has the star-power, beginning with Gregory Peck as a cowboy rapist who learned his bedside manners from Popeye’s Bluto. It’s all hugely enjoyable.

Duel in the Sun

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1946 / Color / 1:37 flat Academy / 144 min. / Special Edition / Street Date August 15, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring Jennifer Jones, Gregory Peck, Joseph Cotten, Lionel Barrymore, Lillian Gish, Walter Huston, Butterfly McQueen, Charles Bickford, Tilly Losch.

Cinematography Lee Garmes, Ray Rennahan and Harold Rosson

Production Designer J. McMillan Johnson

Film Editor Hal C. Kern, John Saure and William H. Ziegler

Original Music Dimitri Tiomkin

Written by Niven Busch,...

“Cain, Curtiz, And Crawford”

By Raymond Benson

Mildred Pierce is one curious piece of cinema. As film critics Molly Haskell and Robert Polito point out in their fascinating conversation that is a supplement on this beautifully-presented Blu-ray release from The Criterion Collection, Pierce is a movie that almost doesn’t know what it wants to be. In many ways it is a woman’s picture, that is, a melodrama, but it’s disguised inside a manufactured film noir.

This reasoning is sound, for in spite of novelist James M. Cain being known for terrific pulp crime fiction (Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice), his 1941 novel Mildred Pierce is not a crime story, unless you want to say that a young woman having an affair with her stepfather is “criminal.” The book is indeed hardboiled and pulpy, but there is no murder in it.

On the other hand, Michael Curtiz...

Nostalgia just ain’t what it used to be.

When the poster for American Graffiti (1973) asked the question “Where were you in ’62?” it was marketing a trend, spiked by the increasing popularity of the theatrical musical Grease, for audiences of a certain age to look backward to a time when life wasn’t ostensibly so complicated, when your life was still out there waiting to be lived, to a time when America hadn’t yet “lost its innocence.” The demarcation point for that alleged loss is often assigned to the upheaval of grief and national confusion experienced in the wake of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963, so it was no accident that the setting for American Graffiti’s night of cruising, romancing and soul-searching was placed a little over a year before that cataclysmic event. The interesting thing about Graffiti was the aggressiveness with which that...

Stars: Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Ann Blyth, Bruce Bennett, Butterfly McQueen | Written by Ranald MacDougall, Catherine Turney | Directed by Michael Curtiz

The shadow of Casablanca will always loom over Michael Curtiz’s bumper filmography, but time has been nearly as kind to Mildred Pierce, an adaptation of James M. Cain’s 1941 novel. A Joan Crawford vehicle made in 1945, the movie is a solid and relevant story that was remade recently for television by Todd Haynes for HBO – albeit minus the murder subplot, which wasn’t in the original text.

Crawford plays Mildred Pierce-Beragon, a woman hauled in by the police following the shooting of her husband, Monte (a slithery Zachary Scott). Mildred is the prime suspect, but then the film flicks to flashback as she starts telling the story of her rises and falls, and we begin to learn of the machinations that ended in murder.

We meet the younger Mildred,...

Twenty years ago, Cheryl Dunye made history as the first African-American lesbian to direct a feature-length film. Now that film, The Watermelon Woman, has finally been given a proper DVD release, courtesy of First Run Features. To mark the occasion, we spoke on the phone with Dunye about the film, history, performance, and authenticity.

The Film Stage: Both The Watermelon Woman and the short that’s included on the new DVD, Black Is Blue, express a high level of commitment and detail in the recreation of documentary form. What documentaries and / or mockumentaries influenced you?

Cheryl Dunye: I’ve been working in this practice since the late ‘80s. I went to Rutgers and had a studio practice there, got my Mfa, and that’s where I discovered what was becoming the queer film world. There was a lack of identity, representation — in the work that was being seen — by,...

Mildred Pierce

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 860

1945 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 111 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date , 2017 /

Starring Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden, Ann Blyth, Bruce Bennett, Lee Patrick, Moroni Olsen, Veda Ann Borg, Jo Ann Marlowe, Butterfly McQueen.

Cinematography: Ernest Haller

Art Direction: Anton Grot

Film Editor: David Weisbart

Original Music: Max Steiner

Written by: Ranald MacDougall from the novel by James M. Cain

Produced by: Jerry Wald, Jack L. Warner

Directed by Michael Curtiz

James M. Cain’s 1941 novel Mildred Pierce offers a venal and self-destructive view of America not with a story of respectable bourgeois society, not the criminal underworld. A de-classed, suburb-dwelling nobody fights her way onto the social register by using men and by hard work… and then watches as her obsessive goals blow up in her face In Cain’s worldview it’s every woman for herself. He drags in an odd personal theme,...

Merle Oberon films: From empress to duchess in 'Hotel.' Merle Oberon films: From starring to supporting roles Turner Classic Movies' Merle Oberon month comes to an end tonight, March 25, '16, with six movies: Désirée, Hotel, Deep in My Heart, Affectionately Yours, Berlin Express, and Night Song. Oberon's presence alone would have sufficed to make them all worth a look, but they have other qualities to recommend them as well. 'Désirée': First supporting role in two decades Directed by Henry Koster, best remembered for his Deanna Durbin musicals and the 1947 fantasy comedy The Bishop's Wife, Désirée (1954) is a sumptuous production that, thanks to its big-name cast, became a major box office hit upon its release. Marlon Brando is laughably miscast as Napoleon Bonaparte, while Jean Simmons plays the title role, the Corsican Conqueror's one-time fiancée Désirée Clary (later Queen of Sweden and Norway). In a supporting role – her...

Joan Crawford in 'Mildred Pierce.' 'Mildred Pierce' review: Very entertaining soap opera Time has a way of making some films seem grander than they really are. A good example is Mildred Pierce, the 1945 black-and-white melodrama directed by Casablanca's Michael Curtiz, and that won star Joan Crawford a Best Actress Oscar. Mildred Pierce is in no way, shape, or form great art, even though it's certainly not a bad film. In fact, as a soap opera it's quite entertaining – no, make that very entertaining; and entertainment is a quality that can stand on its own. (The problem in recent decades is that cinema has become nothing but entertainment.) In the case of Mildred Pierce, the entertainment is formulaic and rather predictable – but in an enjoyable, campy sort of way. Unbridled Hollywood melodrama Now, what makes Mildred Pierce a melodrama is something known as the Dumbest Possible Action – Dpa for short.

Norma Shearer films Note: This article is being revised and expanded. Please check back later. Turner Classic Movies' Norma Shearer month comes to a close this evening, Nov. 24, '15, with the presentation of the last six films of Shearer's two-decade-plus career. Two of these are remarkably good; one is schizophrenic, a confused mix of high comedy and low drama; while the other three aren't the greatest. Yet all six are worth a look even if only because of Norma Shearer herself – though, really, they all have more to offer than just their top star. Directed by W.S. Van Dyke, the no-expense-spared Marie Antoinette (1938) – $2.9 million, making it one of the most expensive movies ever made up to that time – stars the Canadian-born Queen of MGM as the Austrian-born Queen of France. This was Shearer's first film in two years (following Romeo and Juliet) and her first release following husband Irving G.

Norma Shearer films Note: This article is being revised and expanded. Please check back later. Turner Classic Movies' Norma Shearer month comes to a close this evening, Nov. 24, '15, with the presentation of the last six films of Shearer's two-decade-plus career. Two of these are remarkably good; one is schizophrenic, a confused mix of high comedy and low drama; while the other three aren't the greatest. Yet all six are worth a look even if only because of Norma Shearer herself – though, really, they all have more to offer than just their top star. Directed by W.S. Van Dyke, the no-expense-spared Marie Antoinette (1938) – $2.9 million, making it one of the most expensive movies ever made up to that time – stars the Canadian-born Queen of MGM as the Austrian-born Queen of France. This was Shearer's first film in two years (following Romeo and Juliet) and her first release following husband Irving G.

Ruminations: Barber’s Sophomore Effort Brings the War Home

Director Daniel Barber returns with sophomore effort The Keeping Room, his first film since the Death Wish derivative Harry Brown (2009) starring Michael Caine. Based on Julia Hart’s screenplay, Barber takes us back to the waning days of the Civil War for this homestead invasion thriller which poses intriguing intersections of class, race, and the struggle for domination and survival. But though the presentation is compelling, particularly through its visual strengths and effective editing (often glossing over weaker moments in the script prolonging its formulaic third act), it often seems as if the film isn’t exploring its own potential, meekly elegiac in tone as it teases notions of female agency amidst an apathetic and violent backdrop.

Augusta (Brit Marling) and her younger sister Louise (Hailee Steinfeld) have been left without the comfort of men on their South Carolina homestead as the Civil War rages on.

Vivien Leigh ca. late 1940s. Vivien Leigh movies: now controversial 'Gone with the Wind,' little-seen '21 Days Together' on TCM Vivien Leigh is Turner Classic Movies' star today, Aug. 18, '15, as TCM's “Summer Under the Stars” series continues. Mostly a stage actress, Leigh was seen in only 19 films – in about 15 of which as a leading lady or star – in a movie career spanning three decades. Good for the relatively few who saw her on stage; bad for all those who have access to only a few performances of one of the most remarkable acting talents of the 20th century. This evening, TCM is showing three Vivien Leigh movies: Gone with the Wind (1939), 21 Days Together (1940), and A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). Leigh won Best Actress Academy Awards for the first and the third title. The little-remembered film in-between is a TCM premiere. 'Gone with the Wind' Seemingly all...

Rex Ingram in 'The Thief of Bagdad' 1940 with tiny Sabu. Actor Rex Ingram movies on TCM: Early black film performer in 'Cabin in the Sky,' 'Anna Lucasta' It's somewhat unusual for two well-known film celebrities, whether past or present, to share the same name.* One such rarity is – or rather, are – the two movie people known as Rex Ingram;† one an Irish-born white director, the other an Illinois-born black actor. Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” continues today, Aug. 11, '15, with a day dedicated to the latter. Right now, TCM is showing Cabin in the Sky (1943), an all-black musical adaptation of the Faust tale that is notable as the first full-fledged feature film directed by another Illinois-born movie person, Vincente Minnelli. Also worth mentioning, the movie marked Lena Horne's first important appearance in a mainstream motion picture.§ A financial disappointment on the...

Joan Crawford Movie Star Joan Crawford movies on TCM: Underrated actress, top star in several of her greatest roles If there was ever a professional who was utterly, completely, wholeheartedly dedicated to her work, Joan Crawford was it. Ambitious, driven, talented, smart, obsessive, calculating, she had whatever it took – and more – to reach the top and stay there. Nearly four decades after her death, Crawford, the star to end all stars, remains one of the iconic performers of the 20th century. Deservedly so, once you choose to bypass the Mommie Dearest inanity and focus on her film work. From the get-go, she was a capable actress; look for the hard-to-find silents The Understanding Heart (1927) and The Taxi Dancer (1927), and check her out in the more easily accessible The Unknown (1927) and Our Dancing Daughters (1928). By the early '30s, Joan Crawford had become a first-rate film actress, far more naturalistic than...

'Jurassic World' velociraptor kicks Iron Man ass at worldwide box office. 'Jurassic World' officially surpasses 'The Avengers' at worldwide box office Directed by Colin Trevorrow; starring Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Vincent D'Onofrio; and co-executive-produced by Steven Spielberg, Jurassic World has officially become the third biggest worldwide box office hit in history. The Jurassic Park sequel – or reboot, as it's basically the same story with a slightly different twist – has surpassed Marvel's Joss Whedon-directed all-star superhero flick The Avengers, which broke box office records back in 2012. Of course, "officially" just ain't what it used to be – like, in the days before The Fall. So you wisely ask, "But which movie has actually sold the most tickets?" After all, that's the true measure of a film's popularity. Well, that's a tough one to answer without the studios providing accurate, precise numbers. And that's not about to happen. It always...

Looking back over some of the entries for last week's Best Shot episode (Gone With the Wind's first half) and chasing links here and there I found myself at The Anzrin Exchange a personal blog of Alison somebody. It's not a "best shot" piece but an essay written earlier this year about how Gone With the Wind is viewed now (especially in the wake of 12 Years a Slave) and how it has aged in terms of its racial politics and themes - which are entirely separate things though naturally they're in conversation, especially retroactively.

Back then, the world was a different place. There were Civil War veterans still living, the Holocaust was unknown, interracial marriage was illegal, and the Walt Disney Company was close to bankruptcy. A radically different time.

This is the argument that’s made to defend every racist Grandma at Thanksgiving, and it is the argument...

An Oscar-winning actress is an exceptional artist no matter what shade, race or ethnicity she represents. For the sake of this written piece we will concentrate on those actresses of color whose achievement in cinema (and ultimate success of capturing the golden statuette) has made them revered commodities in the motion picture industry.

For some of these minority Oscar-winning actresses being spotlighted they have either excelled at their craft early in their careers or may have enjoyed limited success in the aftermath of their glory. Whatever the case it remains certain that these feminine recipients of Academy Award distinction left a legacy on the big screen in a capacity that cannot be taken away or dismissed.

The You’re in the Minority: Top 10 Oscar-Winning Actresses of Color are (in alphabetical order according to film titles):

1.) Mercedes Ruehl as Anne Napolitano from The Fisher King (1991)

Won the Academy Award for...

Philip Seymour Hoffman, Shirley Temple, and Oscar movies: Library of Congress’ March 2014 screenings (photo: Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote in ‘Capote’) Tributes to the recently deceased Shirley Temple and Philip Seymour Hoffman, and several Academy Award-nominated and -winning films are among the March 2014 screenings at the Library of Congress’ Packard Campus Theater and, in collaboration with the Library’s National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, The State Theatre, both located in Culpeper, Virginia. The 1934 sentimental comedy-drama Little Miss Marker (March 6, Packard) is the movie that turned six-year-old Shirley Temple into a major film star. Temple would become the biggest domestic box-office draw of the mid-1930s, and, Tyrone Power, Alice Faye, Sonja Henie, Don Ameche, Loretta Young, and Madeleine Carroll notwithstanding, would remain 20th Century Fox’s top star until later in the decade. Directed by Alexander Hall (Here Comes Mr. Jordan, My Sister Eileen), Little Miss Marker — actually, a Paramount...

Yesterday’s announcement by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that the The Wizard of Oz will be celebrated at this year’s Oscars was met with widespread enthusiasm. After all, it’s one of Hollywood’s most beloved films, multiple generations have grown up singing its tunes, and it’s celebrating its 75th anniversary.

But The Wizard of Oz wasn’t the only classic movie to come out in 1939. That prolific Hollywood year also boasted Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, John Ford’s Stagecoach, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Ninotchka (“Garbo laughs!”), Gunga Din, William Wyler...

Steve McQueen's film bravely portrays two oppressed groups – but only one could vent their fury

Whether 12 Years a Slave, Steve McQueen's deservedly praised film about slavery in 19th century America, will be as gilded with film awards this year as it has already been with critical plaudits is by no means as certain as some have suggested. In July, an African-American woman, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, was elected president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, which votes for the Oscar winners, but, as the La Times revealed last year, the academy itself is "mostly" white, and by "mostly" they mean an almost laughable 94%. Just in case anyone out there thought they'd slipped through some kind of time/space continuum, yes, you are in 2014.

Obviously a person does not have to be black to appreciate 12 Years a Slave ("enjoy" is the wrong verb for such a harrowing...

‘Gone with the Wind’ actress Alicia Rhett dead at 98; was oldest surviving credited Gwtw cast member Gone with the Wind actress Alicia Rhett, the oldest surviving credited cast member of the 1939 Oscar-winning blockbuster, died on January 3, 2014, at the Bishop Gadsden Episcopal Retirement Community in Charleston, South Carolina, where Rhett had been living since August 2002. Alicia Rhett, born on February 1, 1915, in Savannah, Georgia, was 98. (Photo: Alicia Rhett as India Wilkes in Gone with the Wind.) In Gone with the Wind, the David O. Selznick production made in conjunction with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM head Louis B. Mayer was Selznick’s father-in-law), the stage-trained Alicia Rhett played India Wilkes, the embittered sister of Ashley Wilkes, whom Scarlett O’Hara loves — though Ashley eventually marries Melanie Hamilton (Rhett had auditioned for the role), while Scarlett ends up with Rhett Butler. Based on Margaret Mitchell’s bestseller, Gone with the Wind was (mostly) directed by Victor Fleming...

Why most films of Hollywood's golden age chose to brush race issues under the carpet

I have to wonder what the motivation is for re-releasing Gone With The Wind just a couple months before 12 Years A Slave, its polar opposite among films dealing with the peculiar institution of American slavery. Are they looking to generate coattail ticket receipts from the controversy attending Steve McQueen's harrowing and violent epic? Do they think some retirement-home demographic of faded southern belles and elderly white racists will emerge, stooped and wrinkled, to reclaim it one last time?

Who knows? But it's interesting, now that a movie is on the market that lingers in detail on the pain, violence, sexual abuse, squalor and pure evil of slavery, to remind ourselves how they dealt with it in the Golden Age of Hollywood (also the Golden Age of Jim Crow). Of course, they typically dealt with...

Vivien Leigh: Legendary ‘Gone with the Wind’ and ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ star would have turned 100 today Vivien Leigh was perhaps the greatest film star that hardly ever was. What I mean is that following her starring role in the 1939 Civil War blockbuster Gone with the Wind, Leigh was featured in a mere eight* movies over the course of the next 25 years. The theater world’s gain — she was kept busy on the London stage — was the film world’s loss. But even if Leigh had starred in only two movies — Gone with the Wind and A Streetcar Named Desire — that would have been enough to make her a screen legend; one who would have turned 100 years old today, November 5, 2013. (Photo: Vivien Leigh ca. 1940.) Vivien Leigh (born Vivian Mary Hartley to British parents in Darjeeling, India) began her film career in the mid-’30s, playing bit roles in British...

Hattie McDaniel as Mammy in ‘Gone with the Wind’: TCM schedule on August 20, 2013 (photo: Vivien Leigh and Hattie McDaniel in ‘Gone with the Wind’) See previous post: “Hattie McDaniel: Oscar Winner Makes History.” 3:00 Am Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943). Director: David Butler. Cast: Joan Leslie, Dennis Morgan, Eddie Cantor, Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Errol Flynn, John Garfield, Ida Lupino, Ann Sheridan, Dinah Shore, Alexis Smith, Jack Carson, Alan Hale, George Tobias, Edward Everett Horton, S.Z. Sakall, Hattie McDaniel, Ruth Donnelly, Don Wilson, Spike Jones, Henry Armetta, Leah Baird, Willie Best, Monte Blue, James Burke, David Butler, Stanley Clements, William Desmond, Ralph Dunn, Frank Faylen, James Flavin, Creighton Hale, Sam Harris, Paul Harvey, Mark Hellinger, Brandon Hurst, Charles Irwin, Noble Johnson, Mike Mazurki, Fred Kelsey, Frank Mayo, Joyce Reynolds, Mary Treen, Doodles Weaver. Bw-127 mins. 5:15 Am Janie (1944). Director: Michael Curtiz. Cast: Joyce Reynolds, Robert Hutton,...

Mary Boland movies: Scene-stealing actress has her ‘Summer Under the Stars’ day on TCM Turner Classic Movies will dedicate the next 24 hours, Sunday, August 4, 2013, not to Lana Turner, Lauren Bacall, Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Esther Williams, or Bette Davis — TCM’s frequent Warner Bros., MGM, and/or Rko stars — but to the marvelous scene-stealer Mary Boland. A stage actress who was featured in a handful of movies in the 1910s, Boland came into her own as a stellar film supporting player in the early ’30s, initially at Paramount and later at most other Hollywood studios. First, the bad news: TCM’s "Summer Under the Stars" Mary Boland Day will feature only two movies from Boland’s Paramount period: the 1935 Best Picture Academy Award nominee Ruggles of Red Gap, which TCM has shown before, and one TCM premiere. So, no rarities like Secrets of a Secretary, Mama Loves Papa, Melody in Spring,...

Patty Andrews: Last Surviving member of The Andrews Sisters dead at 94 Patty Andrews, the lead vocalist and last surviving member of the Andrews Sisters musical trio, died of "natural causes" earlier today at her home in the Los Angeles suburb of Northridge, in the San Fernando Valley. Andrews, who was also the youngest sister, was 94. (Photo: The Andrews Sisters: Laverne Andrews, Patty Andrews, Maxene Andrews.) Born in Minnesota into a Greek-Norwegian family, the Andrews Sisters began their show business career in the early ’30s, while both Maxene and Patty were still teenagers. Their first big hit came out in 1938: the English version of the Yiddish song "Bei Mir Bistu Shein" (aka "Bei mir bist du schön"), with lyrics — "To me, you’re grand" — by Sammy Cahn and Saul Chaplin. (The song made into the movies that same year, but Warner Bros. star Priscilla Lane is the one singing it in Love,...

The latest episode of "True Blood," "Gone Gone Gone," made us fall in love with Jason Stackhouse (Ryan Kwanten) all over again.

Not that we ever stopped (don't be ridiculous), but his poignant farewell to Hoyt (Jim Parrack) had us blubbering like a pre-vampire Tara.

Hoyt, tired of being the hypotenuse of a love triangle with Jessica ( Deborah Ann Woll) and Jason, asks his ex-girlfriend (aka the "Cheeto-headed tramp," if you're asking Hoyt's mom Maxine) to meet him at Merlotte's. Before heading to Alaska for a new career in oil riggery, he has one final favor of his ex-girlfriend: to glamour away his pain.

Jessica and Jason both wept as she erased Hoyt's memories of them, but Jason was disconsolate. Jess and Hoyt found (and lost) each other only recently, but Jason and Bubba were friends from childhood -- bros before Cheetos and whatnot.

And when Officer Stackhouse later stopped...

A 1938 copy of Gone With the Wind signed by nearly the entire cast of the film sold for $135,300 ($110,000 plus $25,300 buyer's premium) at an auction conducted by Profiles in History. The book features the signatures of more than two dozen people, including Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland, Hattie McDaniel, Butterfly McQueen, George Reeves, producer David O. Selznick and director Victor Fleming, making one of the largest collections of cast signatures for the movie on one item. The item had a presale estimate of $40,000-$60,000. The name of

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Gone With The Wind Actress Ann Rutherford Dies. [Photo: Ann Rutherford as Carreen O'Hara, Evelyn Keyes as Suellen O'Hara in Gone with the Wind.]

Ann Rutherford‘s most notable screen roles were in films made away from both MGM and Wallace Beery. She was a young woman who falls for trumpeter George Montgomery in Archie Mayo’s 20th Century Fox musical Orchestra Wives (1942), and became enmeshed with (possibly) amnesiac Tom Conway in Anthony Mann’s Rko thriller Two O’Clock Courage (1945).

Following a couple of minor supporting roles — in the Danny Kaye comedy The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) at Goldwyn and the Errol Flynn costumer The Adventures of Don Juan (1948) at Warner Bros. — and the female lead in the independently made cattle drama Operation Haylift (1950), opposite Bill Williams, Ann Rutherford retired from the screen. (Rutherford would later say that her Operation Haylift experience was anything but pleasant.)

She then turned to television, making regular television appearances in the ’50s (The Donna Reed Show, Playhouse 90,...

February 28 usually ties off our grim second month, but this year we suffer one more day in February's bleak tundra. Let's warm up with some tidbits about DNA, basketball, the master of '50s musicals, and the singer-songwriter who has one hand in her pocket, and the other on, oh, probably a Buddhist urn right now.

1883: The first vaudeville theater opens in Boston, Massachusetts. Over 120 years later, we're still talking about the overwhelmingly popular concept of blackface. Sigh. We even use the word "blackface" to describe things that don't qualify as blackface, like Billy Crystal's impersonation of Sammy Davis, Jr. at the Oscars. Not blackface. It may be in poor or weird taste, but it's not a minstrel show. Now, that crazy crap that Roger Sterling tried out on Mad Men? That's blackface. Ohhhh, yes it is. Always nice when Don Draper gets to tell someone else, "You're a mess.

Do we really need another film where white people sort out race relations? Who does The Help really help, asks John Patterson

Coming so swiftly on the heels of The Black Power Mixtape, which smelt of cordite, tear-gas and revolution, The Help, which smells of jasmine, magnolia flowers and compromise, is bound to seem a little tame in comparison. Like most top-down, white-created fictions about the African-American experience (to wit, The Blind Side) it takes a white perspective, offers a white protagonist as the galvaniser of events and fairly reeks of self-congratulation, cultural tourism and historical revisionism. Thankfully, it's also anchored by rock-solid performances from Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer as the eponymous black maids working in upper-middle class white households in 1961 Mississippi, and by their diverse employers – Emma Stone, Jessica Chastain, Bryce Dallas Howard – Southern belles raised in the shadow of Margaret Mitchell and Scarlett O'Hara.

None of which...

Joan Blondell, Dick Powell, Dames Joan Blondell has always been a favorite of mine, much like fellow wisecracking 1930s Warner Bros. players Aline MacMahon and Glenda Farrell. The fact that Blondell never became a top star says more about audiences — who preferred, say, Shirley Temple and Mickey Rooney — than about Blondell's screen presence and acting abilities. As part of its "Summer Under the Stars" film series, Turner Classic Movies is currently showing no less than 16 Joan Blondell movies today, including the TCM premiere of the 1968 crime drama Kona Coast. Directed by Lamont Johnson, Kona Coast stars Richard Boone and the capable Vera Miles. Blondell has a supporting role — one of two dozen from 1950 (For Heaven's Sake) to 1981 (The Woman Inside, released two years after Blondell's death from leukemia). [Joan Blondell Movie Schedule.] Unfortunately, TCM isn't showing the super-rare (apparently due to rights issues) The Blue Veil, Curtis Bernhardt's 1951 melodrama that earned Blondell her...

Vivien Leigh, Hattie McDaniel, Gone with the Wind (top); Greer Garson, Robert Donat, Goodbye Mr. Chips (middle); Irene Dunne, Charles Boyer, Love Affair (bottom) Turner Classic Movies' homage to the Best Picture Oscar nominees of 1939 continues this evening with three more entries: Victor Fleming's Gone with the Wind, Sam Wood's Goodbye, Mr. Chips, and Leo McCarey's Love Affair. If you haven't watched all three of those, then you owe yourself to check them out. Gone with the Wind has had its critical reputation somewhat tarnished in the last couple of decades. There are several reasons for that, one of which is the film's portrayal of happy black slaves who talk funny, and, especially in the case of the impertinent Prissy, are also both lazy and dimwitted. Personally, I have great respect for the two black female characters in Gone with the Wind: in fact, both Hattie McDaniel...

director Wendell B. Harris Jr.

As most of you know, Tambay and I are curators of an independent Black film series that has recently expanded into a five-day festival as well – ActNow: New Voices in Black Cinema.

The festival itself starts next Friday, February 4th and runs until Wednesday February 9th, and while we’re showing mostly new cinema the closing film is what we’ve dubbed one of the ‘New Black Classics’, a film most of you are intimately familiar with, Wendell B. Harris Jr.’s Chameleon Street (see Quadree’s ’09 fantastic writeup if you’re unfamiliar).

With most of our lineup, ActNow’s blogger Tanya St. Louis has interviewed the directors or producers of the films, and her first is with the esteemed Mr. Harris himself.

Please read it below and help spread the word about this important new film festival.

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Wendell B. Harris Jr. is the...

Today is the Centennial of Butterfly McQueen, she of the famously squeaky voice, immortalized in her very first picture Gone With the Wind (1939). She died from an unfortunate kerosene heater accident 15 years ago but since it's the 100th anniversary of her birth today we send her a warm "Thank You" to the great beyond. Butterfly was a staunch Atheist but we think she'd approve of our church. In the church of cinema, everyone involved with classic films lives on for eternity (provided the negatives weren't destroyed).

"Gone With the Wind" (her first) and "Mosquito Coast" (her last feature film)

McQueen quit early, discouraged by endless servant roles. That's all black actresses could get in the Golden Age of Hollywood. In short: it wasn't golden for people of color.

"I don't know nuthin' bout birthin' babies!"

...which she shrieked hysterically in Gone With the Wind (1939) may have been her most famous cinematic moment,...

When I saw that this week’s episode was written by Alan Ball, I got all excited. I figured any episode penned by the vampire master himself would have to be pretty amazing. Plus it would provide interesting insight into how he’s feeling about his creations this season (now at its half-way point).

The answer, it seems, is that he’s as bored as we all are by the show’s myriad subplots. I say this because he spends the majority of this episode, by far, dealing with political intrigue in and around Russell’s mansion. This part, as it’s been all season, was indeed amazing. (In fact, I’d say I’m enjoying the Russell storyline much more than the maenad/Fellowship of the Sun business of last season.) Which only serves to make the subplots – even those involving the were pack and Alcide – that much more of a drag.

And the most embarrassing example has been the rise of 'fake science', which values naivety over facts – a bit like Sarah Palin

Much criticism – positive and negative – has already been ladled on Ego "James" Cameron's latest film, Dancing with Smurfs, aka Avatar. But one point that has not been discussed is how much Sarah Palin would enjoy it.

On the one hand, considering that this movie features the most simplistic racial stereotypes since Star Wars' Jar Jar Binks did his best Butterfly McQueen impression for George Lucas, Avatar is an obvious winner for Palin. After all, she is the woman who, according to her father, left Hawaii University because there were too many Asians there for her liking: "They were a minority-type thing and it wasn't glamorous, so she came home," said Chuck Heath.

On the other hand, as Avatar comes weighed down with anti-war sentiments, topped with some...

There is nothing wrong with Gone with the Wind. Yes, it’s a bit racist. Heck, it’s a lot racist and you get to cringe listening to Clark Gable say things like “darkie.” The black characters are mostly shameful, and the film revels in the greatness and loss of the South. There are interesting ambiguities, though. Rhett Butler (Gable) recognizes that the civil war is stupid and bound for failure, but later on enlists. Okay, there’s a lot wrong with the film, but it’s also one of those films of such grand dramatic heft that it is also undeniable. My review of Gone with the Wind after the (Kris Kross will make you Jump) jump.

It’s hard not to wrestle with the history of the film, and Spike Lee has decidedly dismissed it. He’s not unfair for doing so; there are a lot of problems with the text.

Who'd have thought a film about a sexually abused black teenager would make whole cinemas stand and cheer?

This week, as you have no doubt been kept well informed, marked the first anniversary of Barack Obama's election victory. Yet the most telling and inadvertently damning verdict about what – if anything – has happened to Us race relations since then has come, not from HBO, but from the cinema.

As chance would have it, two movies out this month in America have as their protagonist a poor, overweight black teenager, a coincidence that would once have been unthinkable. Yet this is not quite the modern triumph of post-racial America that it might seem.

Precious: Based On The Novel Push by Sapphire came out on Friday and, fortunately, it is a lot better than that clunking subtitle would suggest. In two weeks' time, The Blind Side will be inflicted on the American public,...

Gone with the Wind is set to hit both DVD and Blu-ray in a new five disc 70th Anniversary box set on December 1st. Here is the official press release from Warner Home Video:

Winner of 10 Academy Awards including Best Picture, and still history's all time domestic box-office champion ($1.5 billion), Gone with the Wind has long been considered the most celebrated motion picture of all time. On November 17, Warner Home Video will honor the romantic epic with a stunningly restored and remastered version, available for the first time on Blu-ray. Gone with the Wind [70th Anniversary Ultimate Collector's Edition] is sure to be a "must-have" for collectors of classic films, available both in Blu-ray as well as on DVD.

The highlight of this new Blu-ray version of Gone with the Wind is how it looks and sounds. As they've done with Wizard of Oz, Warner Home Video continues to maximize what the Blu-ray format...