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Linda Gray wants to transform Southfork Ranch and produce a holiday movie for Dallas fans. The actress who played Sue Ellen Ewing is executive producing a holiday movie that will give her one more chance to revisit this special place. Most of all, she wants to also star in this movie along with one of her former castmates.

Here are all the details.

Used with permission by Lifetime Linda Gray Is Executive Producer Of Dallas-Inspired Holiday Movie

On Friday, Michael Fairman TV reported that “Dallas star Linda Gray signs on as executive producer of a proposed holiday-themed TV movie to shoot at Southfork.” The insider reports that Gray wants to return to Southfork to film a movie “with a major twist.” Describing this as a love letter” to the fans of the evening soap, this is a “lighthearted Christmas comedy.”

Co-starring with her would “potentially” be Patrick Duffy, who portrayed Bobby Ewing.

With a 54% Rotten Tomatoes score, Reese Witherspoons 2005 rom-com Just Like Heaven stands as a spiritual remake of one of Cary Grants early screwball films. Grant and Constance Bennett star in 1937s Topper as the ghostly Kerby couple who spend their afterlife trying to cheer up their strung-up boss Cosmo Topper. The films quick dialogue and sharp jokes are signature aspects of the screwball genre, and Just Like Heaven employs these techniques with a modern twist. Although not entirely identical from a plot standpoint, these two films share similar themes, characters, and ghost-centric comedy.

These films also fall quite low on Witherspoons and Grants respective career totem poles. Just Like Heaven was eventually revived to cult classic status, especially as a relic of early 2000s rom-coms. Likewise, Topper remains relatively unknown when compared to Grants more popular screwball work like Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, and The Philadelphia Story. Connecting...

“It Happened One Night,” which premiered at Radio City Music Hall on Feb. 22, 1934, helped usher in the screwball romantic comedy, changed the careers of stars Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, director Frank Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin and transformed the Poverty Row Columbia Pictures into a major player. And let’s not forget, “It Happened One Night” also made Oscar history winning five major Oscars: picture, director, adapted screenplay and both actor and actress. It would be 41 years before “One Flew of the Cuckoo’s Nest” would accomplish the same feat at the Academy Awards.

Based on the short story “Night Bus,” the smart, endearing road movie focuses on spoiled rotten Ellie Andrews (Colbert) who has gone against her wealthy father’s (Walter Connelly) wishes by marrying the gold-digging King Westley (Jameson Thomas). Before their wedding night, her father whisked her away to his yacht in Florida. She manages to...

The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.It was often said that women wanted to be with Cary Grant and men wanted to be Cary Grant, but perhaps no one was more consumed by the perception of Cary Grant—the handsome, unremittingly suave and stylish movie star—than Grant himself. “Even I want to be Cary Grant,” the actor once mused. Indeed, Grant’s public and on-screen persona was a carefully crafted, meticulously honed, and ultimately triumphant development, as much to suit the needs of his ascending celebrity as it was to shroud an unhappy childhood, a series of romantic passions and disappointments, and a latent dark side fostered by uncertainty and doubt. It was, however, and in any and all cases, resoundingly successful. Grant was the epitome of the movie star, a Hollywood icon and one of its most entertaining,...

Robert “Bob” Ullman, a longtime Broadway and Off Broadway press agent whose career spanned Ethel Merman, A Chorus Line, Curse of the Starving Class and many others, died of cardiac arrest on July 31 in Bayshore, Long Island, New York. He was 97.

His death was announced by longtime friend (and former Broadway press agent) Rev. Joshua Ellis.

Among the many Broadway productions on which Ullman worked were Ethel Merman and Mary Martin: Together on Broadway, A Chorus Line (from workshop to Public Theater to Broadway), Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in The Visit, Lauren Bacall in Cactus Flower, The Dining Room, Driving Miss Daisy, Sunday in the Park with George, and over 150 additional Broadway and off-Broadway plays and musicals.

Actors and theater greats with whom Ullman worked include Tallulah Bankhead, Luise Rainer, James Dean, Dame Edith Evans, Geraldine Page, Phil Silvers, Bert Lahr, Rosemary Harris, James Earl Jones, Sam Waterston, Colleen Dewhurst,...

Last fall’s audience-pleaser is indeed a pleasant surprise, not because it’s a classic but because it isn’t plain awful. An unnecessary third remake of a Depression-era Cinderella story has been concocted to showcase the special talents of Lady Gaga, who indeed comes off as the most personable and deserving star-to-be-born since Judy Garland. Bradley Cooper stunned the industry by wearing almost all the creative hats on this thing — and producing an entertainment that will enhance the careers of all involved.

A Star Is Born

4K Ultra-hd + Blu-ray

Warner Home Video

2019 / Color / 2:41 widescreen / 135 min. / Street Date February 19, 2019 / 44.95

Starring: Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper, Sam Elliott, Andrew Dice Clay, Dave Chappelle, Anthony Ramos, Ravi Gavron, Ron Rifkin, Marlon Williams, Brandi Carlile.

Cinematography: Matthew Libatique

Film Editor: Jay Cassidy

Songs: Bradley Cooper, Lady Gaga, Edith Piaf, Jason Isbell, Paul Kennerley, Lukas Nelson

Written by Bradley Cooper, Eric Roth, Will Fetters...

“A Star Is Born” has always been a great talent vehicle, including the new Bradley Cooper-Lady Gaga version, which Warner Bros. opened Oct. 5. Previous versions showcased big-name talent, but there’s also a stellar lineup of people who almost made the film but didn’t, including Cary Grant, Cher, Elvis Presley, Whitney Houston, Denzel Washington, Tom Cruise, Beyoncé Knowles and, behind the cameras, Mike Nichols, Quincy Jones and Clint Eastwood.

The new film is officially the fourth version, but it’s sort of the fifth. In 1932, Rko made “What Price Hollywood?” about an L.A. waitress who becomes a movie star while her alcoholic mentor declines. In the July 19, 1932, review, Variety shrugged, “It’s a fan magazine interpretation of Hollywood.” Five years later, Selznick Intl. Pictures’ “A Star Is Born” had so many similarities that Rko considered suing.

Each version added an innovation: Technicolor in 1937, musical numbers for the 1954 Judy Garland film,...

by Nathaniel R

How many versions of the oft-remade A Star is Born have you seen? There have been four now, five if you count What Price Hollywood, often forgotten because it has a different title but so alike in story beats that the first official A Star is Born was clearly lifting from it wholesale. Since the Judy Garland version they've all been musicals and as of the Barbra Streisand version, the Grammys replaced the Oscars as the key awards show moment when the new superstar wins big while her husband hits rock bottom. But more on all this later maybe..

What Price Hollywood? (1932) Director George Cukor 

Starring Constance Bennett & Lowell Sherman (1 Oscar nomination for writing)

A Star Is Born (1937) Director William Wellman (Cukor declined)

Starring Janet Gaynor & Fredric March

A Star Is Born (1954) Director George Cukor again but this time it's a musical

Starring Judy Garland & James Mason...

At this early stage of the Oscar season, the 10 Experts who are bravely making predictions before most candidates are seen are sure of one thing: Glenn Close, a six-time nominee and the living actress with the most Oscar losses, is about to be finally anointed a winner. The source of her current acclaim is recently opened “The Wife,” about a loyal spouse who has denied her own needs to allow her faithless writer husband to wallow in public acclaim. The film is no “Fatal Attraction” or even “Albert Nobbs” when it comes to making an impact. But it does provide this much-admired actress with a subtle yet simmering emotional arc that hits the “give-her-an-award” boiling point by the end of the film.

But, wait a second. There are just nine Experts picking her as a nominee and only eight saying she will win. Who are these outlier prognosticators taking a...

They’re non-corporeal cut-ups, rich ghosts on the town with nothing better to do than spice up the love life of Roland Young’s harried, henpecked bank president. Hal Roach’s screwball hit did good things for everybody concerned, especially star Cary Grant and bit player Arthur Lake. But the show’s nostalgic heart is Billie Burke, of the tinkly-glass voice. Also starring platinum blonde Constance Bennett, Alan Mowbray and Eugene Pallette.

Topper

Blu-ray

Vci

1937 / B&W / 1:37 flat full frame / 97 min. / Street Date October, 2017 / 20.99

Starring: Constance Bennett, Cary Grant, Roland Young, Billie Burke, Alan Mowbray, Eugene Pallette, Arthur Lake, Hedda Hopper, Virginia Sale, Theodore von Eltz, J. Farrell MacDonald, Elaine Shepard, Ward Bond, Hoagy Carmichael, Lana Turner, Russell Wade, Claire Windsor.

Cinematography: Norbert Brodine

Film Editor: William Terhune

Art Director: William Stevens

Original Music: Marvin Hatley

Written by Jack Jevne, Eric Hatch, Eddie Moran from a novel by Thorne Smith...

Kitty Gordon: Actress in silent movies and on the musical comedy stage. Rediscovering a long-forgotten silent film star: Kitty Gordon It seems almost unthinkable that there are still silent stars who have not been resurrected, their lives and films subject to detailed, if not always reliable, examination. Yet I am reminded by Michael Levenston, a Canadian who has compiled what is best described as a “scrapbook” of her life and career, that there is one such individual – and not just a “name” in silent films, but also from 1901 onwards famed as a singer/actress in musical comedy and on the vaudeville stage in both her native England and the United States. And she is Kitty Gordon (1878-1974). 'The Enchantress' and her $50,000 backside Kitty Gordon was a talented lady, so much so that Victor Herbert wrote the 1911 operetta The Enchantress for her; one who also had a “gimmick,” in that...

Pat O'Brien movies on TCM: 'The Front Page,' 'Oil for the Lamps of China' Remember Pat O'Brien? In case you don't, you're not alone despite the fact that O'Brien was featured – in both large and small roles – in about 100 films, from the dawn of the sound era to 1981. That in addition to nearly 50 television appearances, from the early '50s to the early '80s. Never a top star or a critics' favorite, O'Brien was nevertheless one of the busiest Hollywood leading men – and second leads – of the 1930s. In that decade alone, mostly at Warner Bros., he was seen in nearly 60 films, from Bs (Hell's House, The Final Edition) to classics (American Madness, Angels with Dirty Faces). Turner Classic Movies is showing nine of those today, Nov. 11, '15, in honor of what would have been the Milwaukee-born O'Brien's 116th birthday. Pat O'Brien and James Cagney Spencer Tracy had Katharine Hepburn.

Constance Cummings in 'Night After Night.' Constance Cummings: Working with Frank Capra and Mae West (See previous post: “Constance Cummings: Actress Went from Harold Lloyd to Eugene O'Neill.”) Back at Columbia, Harry Cohn didn't do a very good job at making Constance Cummings feel important. By the end of 1932, Columbia and its sweet ingenue found themselves in court, fighting bitterly over stipulations in her contract. According to the actress and lawyer's daughter, Columbia had failed to notify her that they were picking up her option. Therefore, she was a free agent, able to offer her services wherever she pleased. Harry Cohn felt otherwise, claiming that his contract player had waived such a notice. The battle would spill over into 1933. On the positive side, in addition to Movie Crazy 1932 provided Cummings with three other notable Hollywood movies: Washington Merry-Go-Round, American Madness, and Night After Night. 'Washington Merry-Go-Round...

Constance Cummings: Actress in minor Hollywood movies became major London stage star. Constance Cummings: Actress went from Harold Lloyd and Frank Capra to Noël Coward and Eugene O'Neill Actress Constance Cummings, whose career spanned more than six decades on stage, in films, and on television in both the U.S. and the U.K., died ten years ago on Nov. 23. Unlike other Broadway imports such as Ann Harding, Katharine Hepburn, Miriam Hopkins, and Claudette Colbert, the pretty, elegant Cummings – who could have been turned into a less edgy Constance Bennett had she landed at Rko or Paramount instead of Columbia – never became a Hollywood star. In fact, her most acclaimed work, whether in films or – more frequently – on stage, was almost invariably found in British productions. That's most likely why the name Constance Cummings – despite the DVD availability of several of her best-received performances – is all but forgotten.

'Sorrell and Son' with H.B. Warner and Alice Joyce. 'Sorrell and Son' 1927 movie: Long thought lost, surprisingly effective father-love melodrama stars a superlative H.B. Warner Partially shot on location in England and produced independently by director Herbert Brenon at Joseph M. Schenck's United Artists, the 1927 Sorrell and Son is a skillful melodrama about paternal devotion in the face of both personal and social adversity. This long-thought-lost version of Warwick Deeping's 1925 bestseller benefits greatly from the veteran Brenon's assured direction, deservedly shortlisted in the first year of the Academy Awards.* Crucial to the film's effectiveness, however, is the portrayal of its central character, a war-scarred Englishman who sacrifices it all for the happiness of his son. Luckily, the London-born H.B. Warner, best remembered for playing Jesus Christ in another 1927 release, Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings, is the embodiment of honesty, selflessness, and devotion. Less is...

Article by Cliff Saxton

Cliff Saxton is the Archivist for Micds (Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School), known as St. Louis Country Day School when Vincent Price attended in the 1920’s. In 2011 I asked Mr. Saxton to write an article about Vincent Price’s days at Country Day in honor of Vincentennial, the Vincent Price 100th Birthday Celebration, which we were preparing. There is information here I have never seen in any biographies of Vincent Price and I thank Mr. Saxton for taking the time to research and write this article. In honor of it being Vincent Price week here in St. Louis with Victoria Price in town for three fun events (read about the details of those Here), We Are Movie Geeks has decided to re-post Cliff Saxton’s article.

In 1922, St. Louis Country Day School welcomed a young man who would become one of the school...

Charles Brackett ca. 1945: Hollywood diarist and Billy Wilder's co-screenwriter (1936–1949) and producer (1945–1949). Q&A with 'Charles Brackett Diaries' editor Anthony Slide: Billy Wilder's screenwriter-producer partner in his own words Six-time Academy Award winner Billy Wilder is a film legend. He is renowned for classics such as The Major and the Minor, Double Indemnity, Sunset Blvd., Witness for the Prosecution, Some Like It Hot, and The Apartment. The fact that Wilder was not the sole creator of these movies is all but irrelevant to graduates from the Auteur School of Film History. Wilder directed, co-wrote, and at times produced his films. That should suffice. For auteurists, perhaps. But not for those interested in the whole story. That's one key reason why the Charles Brackett diaries are such a great read. Through Brackett's vantage point, they offer a welcome – and unique – glimpse into the collaborative efforts that resulted in...

Greta Garbo movie 'The Kiss.' Greta Garbo movies on TCM Greta Garbo, a rarity among silent era movie stars, is Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” performer today, Aug. 26, '15. Now, why would Garbo be considered a silent era rarity? Well, certainly not because she easily made the transition to sound, remaining a major star for another decade. Think Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, William Powell, Fay Wray, Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery, John Barrymore, Warner Baxter, Janet Gaynor, Constance Bennett, etc. And so much for all the stories about actors with foreign accents being unable to maintain their Hollywood stardom following the advent of sound motion pictures. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer star, Garbo was no major exception to the supposed rule. Mexican Ramon Novarro, another MGM star, also made an easy transition to sound, and so did fellow Mexicans Lupe Velez and Dolores del Rio, in addition to the very British...

Virginia Bruce: MGM actress ca. 1935. Virginia Bruce movies on TCM: Actress was the cherry on 'The Great Ziegfeld' wedding cake Unfortunately, Turner Classic Movies has chosen not to feature any non-Hollywood stars – or any out-and-out silent film stars – in its 2015 “Summer Under the Stars” series.* On the other hand, TCM has come up with several unusual inclusions, e.g., Lee J. Cobb, Warren Oates, Mae Clarke, and today, Aug. 25, Virginia Bruce. A second-rank MGM leading lady in the 1930s, the Minneapolis-born Virginia Bruce is little remembered today despite her more than 70 feature films in a career that spanned two decades, from the dawn of the talkie era to the dawn of the TV era, in addition to a handful of comebacks going all the way to 1981 – the dawn of the personal computer era. Career highlights were few and not all that bright. Examples range from playing the...

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...

Adolphe Menjou movies today (This article is currently being revised.) Despite countless stories to the contrary, numerous silent film performers managed to survive the coming of sound. Adolphe Menjou, however, is a special case in that he not only remained a leading man in the early sound era, but smoothly made the transition to top supporting player in mid-decade, a position he would continue to hold for the quarter of a century. Menjou is Turner Classic Movies' Star of the Day today, Aug. 3, as part of TCM's "Summer Under the Stars" 2015 series. Right now, TCM is showing William A. Wellman's A Star Is Born, the "original" version of the story about a small-town girl (Janet Gaynor) who becomes a Hollywood star, while her husband (Fredric March) boozes his way into oblivion. In typical Hollywood originality (not that things are any different elsewhere), this 1937 version of the story – produced by...

Continuing the tradition of brisk pre-Code films, Joel McCrea’s occasional appearances in Gregory La Cava’s 1933 Bed of Roses serve as strange moral medium between the wanton hedonism of the lead Constance Bennett and the upcoming censorship of the era. Screenwriter Wanda Tuchock’s story of jail-hopping prostitutes-on-the-side seems like a victory lap for vice-ridden cinematic world of the early 30s, including flippant talk of suicide, heavily implied sex, liberal boozing, and poking fun at previous attempts of government sponsored moral judgment (“The Eighteenth Amendment is a law, and as a law should be enforced until it stops being a law”). The film begins in a prison as Bennett’s Lorry Evans and partner-in-crime Minnie (Pert Kelton) walk out of their cells, trash-talking life outside in radio-ready cadence and street-ready slang. They have short hair, hats tipped on the side of their head (I assume gravity worked differently in...

'Cat People' 1942 actress Simone Simon Remembered: Starred in Jacques Tourneur's cult horror movie classic (photo: Simone Simon in 'Cat People') Pert, pouty, pretty Simone Simon is best remembered for her starring roles in Jacques Tourneur's cult horror movie Cat People (1942) and in Jean Renoir's French film noir La Bête Humaine (1938). Long before Brigitte Bardot, Mamie Van Doren, Ann-Margret, and (for a few years) Jane Fonda became known as cinema's Sex Kittens, Simone Simon exuded feline charm in a film career that spanned a quarter of a century. From the early '30s to the mid-'50s, she seduced men young and old on both sides of the Atlantic – at times, with fatal results. During that period, Simon was featured in nearly 40 movies in France, Italy, Germany, Britain, and Hollywood. Besides Jean Renoir, in her native country she worked for the likes of Jacqueline Audry...

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...

Honorary Award: Gloria Swanson, Rita Hayworth among dozens of women bypassed by the Academy (photo: Honorary Award non-winner Gloria Swanson in 'Sunset Blvd.') (See previous post: "Honorary Oscars: Doris Day, Danielle Darrieux Snubbed.") Part three of this four-part article about the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Honorary Award bypassing women basically consists of a long, long — and for the most part quite prestigious — list of deceased women who, some way or other, left their mark on the film world. Some of the names found below are still well known; others were huge in their day, but are now all but forgotten. Yet, just because most people (and the media) suffer from long-term — and even medium-term — memory loss, that doesn't mean these women were any less deserving of an Honorary Oscar. So, among the distinguished female film professionals in Hollywood and elsewhere who have passed away without...

Honorary Oscars 2014: Hayao Miyazaki, Jean-Claude Carrière, and Maureen O’Hara; Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award goes to Harry Belafonte One good thing about the creation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Governors Awards — an expedient way to remove the time-consuming presentation of the (nearly) annual Honorary Oscar from the TV ratings-obsessed, increasingly youth-oriented Oscar show — is that each year up to four individuals can be named Honorary Oscar recipients, thus giving a better chance for the Academy to honor film industry veterans while they’re still on Planet Earth. (See at the bottom of this post a partial list of those who have gone to the Great Beyond, without having ever received a single Oscar statuette.) In 2014, the Academy’s Board of Governors has selected a formidable trio of honorees: Japanese artist and filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, 73; French screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, 82; and Irish-born Hollywood actress Maureen O’Hara,...

The following is an essay featured in the anthology George Cukor - On/Off Hollywood (Capricci, Paris, 2013), for sale at www.capricci.fr.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center will be running a complete retrospective on the director, "The Discreet Charm of George Cukor," in New York December 13, 2013 - January 7, 2014. Many thanks to David Phelps, Fernando Ganzo, and Camille Pollas for their generous permission.

The Second-hand Illusion:

Notes on Cukor

Above: The Chapman Report (1962), A Life of Her Own (1950)

“There’s always something about them that you don’t know that you’d like to know. Spencer Tracy had that. In fact, they do all have that – all the big ones have it. You feel very close to them but there is the ultimate thing withheld from you – and you want to find out.” —George Cukor1

“Can you tell what a woman’s like by just looking at her?” —The Chapman Report...

The Goose Woman (1925), directed by Clarence Brown, just screened at the Hippodrome Festival of Silent Cinema, accompanied by one of the finest and most remarkable live scores it's ever been my privilege to experience. Jane Gardner's soundtrack, incorporating piano, violin and drums, but also baby cries and a musical saw, was so good I wondered if it might be causing me to overrate the movie, in essence a moderately soapy melodrama, but the fact that no less a figure than Kevin Brownlow, who rediscovered and restored the lost film and supplied the print for the screening, considers it one of his very favorites, reassures me that I haven't taken leave of my critical faculties in a musical rapture.

The plot derives from a true-life murder case, still unsolved, but such open-ended stories have never been Hollywood's bag so this Universal production wraps things up neatly by the end. Part...

Constance Bennett movies on TCM: What Price Hollywood? Constance Bennett is Turner Classic Movies’ Star of the Month of November. TCM will be presenting six Constance Bennett movies tonight, including what is probably the actress’ best-known vehicle: What Price Hollywood? (1932). (Please see this evening’s schedule below. Photo: Constance Bennett publicity shot ca. early ’30s.) Based on an original story by Hollywood insider Adela Rogers St. Johns, the George Cukor-directed drama tells the story of a young waitress fast on the way up the Hollywood [...]...

From Japanese ghost stories such as Ringu (1998) and Ju-on (2002, remade as The Grudge) to modern revisionist ghost stories such as Brad Anderson’s Session 9 (2001) and Ti West’s The Innkeepers (2011), cinematic specters have nearly always been evil, or at the very least, malicious. Scary movies have long held the belief that ghosts should frighten us, and Hollywood had lined their pockets with that notion, but is it possible to make a good movie about “good” ghosts? We think so, and here’s our proof… our Top Ten Movies About Friendly Ghosts.

10. Heart And Souls (1993)

Anything starring Robert Downey, Jr. is worth checking out in my book, but this comedy was surprisingly enjoyable. Downey plays a guy used by four ghosts to reconcile their lives before moving on into the afterlife. The catch is, Downey is less than enthusiastic, but finds himself the catalyst for something bigger than himself and goes along for the ride.

Tom Cruise as Stacee Jaxx, Rock of Ages Tom Cruise to play opposite Beyoncé Knowles in Clint Eastwood's remake of A Star Is Born? That's a possibility, according to Deadline.com, which says Eastwood is in talks with Cruise. Or vice-versa. Cruise, who turns 50 next July 3 (Oliver Stone's movie was off by a day), plays a rock-and-roll star named Stacee Jaxx in Adam Shankman's Rock of Ages. Playing another rock-and-roller shouldn't be too much of a stretch. As per Deadline, the formerly pregnant Beyoncé is ready to shoot "as soon as June." Now, Rock of Ages opens next June 15, but Cruise — who had a major worldwide hit late last year with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol — is already busy working elsewhere. Last seen handing the Best Picture Oscar to The Artist's Thomas Langmann a couple of weeks ago, Cruise recently finished working on Christopher McQuarrie's One Shot...

Who won the Super Bowl this past Sunday? You don't remember? You're probably not alone. However, you'll likely recall some of the ads and shows presented during the game. Curiously, even more memorable than M.I.A.'s middle finger, Madonna's (otherwise PG-rated) Mylène Farmer-style musical extravaganza, and the movie spots for The Dictator, The Avengers, Battleship, and John Carter was a simple car ad. A Chrysler car ad, for Christ sake. (Please scroll down.) The ad has become a cause célèbre not necessarily because of what it has to say or how the message is conveyed. In fact, "It's Halftime America" looks like every corny ad that G.E., for one, has been cranking out since time immemorial. The issue here is the political affiliations of the ad's car salesman: Clint Eastwood. Clint Eastwood, Chrysler Super Bowl Halftime commercial Eastwood, a paragon of socially sanctioned vigilantism disguised as...

Don't be fooled by Madonna's chic spectre in pearls in W.E. Female ghosts are the most terrifying spooks on film

One of the daffiest aspects of W.E., Madonna's deeply daffy film about Wallis Simpson, is the way our heroine keeps popping up as a peculiarly soignée ghost. Clad in a little black dress and pearls, she dispenses fashion tips and lifestyle aperçus to her younger namesake, who's having a bit of a breakdown that coincides with her Simpson-fixation, in 1990s Manhattan. Murmured words of spectral wisdom include: "Attractive, my dear, is a polite way of saying a woman's made the most of what she's got," and, "The most important thing is your face. The other end you just sit on."

This is perhaps the battiest but also the most diverting element in the film, and one I wish Madonna had explored at more length, if only because the...

Jean Dujardin Actor Jean Dujardin won a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical for his performance as a fading silent-film star in Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist. In the above photo, Dujardin — who also won the Best Actor Award for The Artist in Cannes last year — poses backstage in the press room with his Golden Globe at the 2012 Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, CA, on Sunday, January 15. In many ways, The Artist borrows elements from George Cukor's What Price Glory?, in which Constance Bennett plays a rising star and Lowell Sherman a troubled producer, and the first two A Star Is Born movies, the first directed by William A. Wellman, and starring Janet Gaynor and Fredric March; the second directed by Cukor, and starring Judy Garland and James Mason. All three movies, in turn, were inspired by real-life...

Frederica Sagor Maas, a Hollywood screenwriter in the 1920s, died January 5 at the Country Villa nursing facility in La Mesa, in the San Diego metropolitan area. She was 111. The daughter of Jewish Russian immigrants, she was born Frederica Alexandrina Sagor on July 6, 1900, in New York City. According to her autobiography, The Shocking Miss Pilgrim: A Writer in Early Hollywood, she studied journalism at Columbia University, but quit before graduation to work as an assistant story editor at Universal Pictures' New York office. While at Universal, she kept herself busy going to star-studded premieres and parties, and — as found in her book — having the studio buy the rights to Rex Beach's novel The Goose Woman, thus giving a solid boost to the careers of actresses Louise Dresser and Constance Bennett, and of future five-time Oscar-nominated director Clarence Brown. Sagor left Universal when film executive Al Lichtman and future...

The Goose Woman (1925) Direction: Clarence Brown Cast: Louise Dresser, Jack Pickford, Constance Bennett, Marc McDermott, George Nichols, Gustav von Seyffertitz Screenplay: Melville W. Brown, titles by Dwinelle Benthall; from Rex Beach's story Highly Recommended Louise Dresser, Jack Pickford, The Goose Woman At the 2011 San Francisco Silent Film Festival, the Clarence Brown-directed 1925 Universal release The Goose Woman was introduced by author and film historian Kevin Brownlow. For me, Brown's family drama was the best film I saw at this year's festival. [Spoilers ahead.] Based on a Rex Beach story (itself inspired by a real-life murder trial), The Goose Woman stars future Best Actress Academy Award nominee Louise Dresser as Mary Holmes, a former opera star known as Marie de Nardi. Once the toast of Paris, Mary is now a drunken slattern, living in an old farmhouse where she raises geese. She openly resents her son, Gerald (Jack Pickford), whom she bitterly...

Claudette Colbert/James Robert Parish Q&A Pt.1: 'The Claudette Colbert Business' A follow-up to the previous question: Which roles did Claudette Colbert want — whether at Paramount or elsewhere — that she didn't get? Colbert knew her limitations (because of her sophisticated look and being French-born), so, once a star, she stayed away from seeking parts that would be too far afield from her screen type. Noticeably, she was one of the few actresses in late-1930s Hollywood who did not seek the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind despite the fact that she was a great favorite and personal friend of Gwtw producer David O. Selznick. A few years later, Selznick offered Colbert a huge salary to star in his life-on-the-homefront World War II saga, Since You Went Away. She couldn't resist the hefty fee, but lived to regret the decision, because the set of that...

Mostly a Paramount star, Claudette Colbert hasn't been a frequent presence on Turner Classic Movies — that is, apart from reruns of her relatively few movies at MGM, Warner Bros., and Rko. Unfortunately, TCM's "Summer Under the Stars" day dedicated to Colbert — Friday, August 12 — won't rectify that glaring cinematic omission. [Claudette Colbert Movie Schedule.] Despite the fact that dozens of Claudette Colbert movies remain unavailable — thanks to Universal, owner of the old Paramount movie library — TCM is only presenting one Colbert premiere, Ken Annakin's British-made 1952 drama The Planter's Wife / Outpost in Malaya, co-starring Jack Hawkins. Of course, one rarely seen movie is better than none, but still… Think The Wiser Sex, The Lady Lies, Manslaughter, Young Man of Manhattan, The Phantom President (in case it's lying in some vault somewhere), The Man from Yesterday, Misleading Lady, His Woman, Zaza, Secrets of a Secretary, I Met Him in Paris, Texas Lady, Practically Yours, Skylark, Private Worlds,...

Marlene Dietrich in Kurt Bernhardt's The Woman Men Yearn For Among the silent-film classics to be featured at this year's San Francisco Silent Film Festival are Victor Sjöström's He Who Gets Slapped (1924), starring Lon Chaney, Norma Shearer, and John Gilbert in the newly founded MGM studios' first production; five-time Oscar nominee Clarence Brown's The Goose Woman (1925), starring Louise Dresser and Constance Bennett, and which was recently restored by UCLA; and William Desmond Taylor's Huckleberry Finn (1920). Taylor's 1922 murder — unsolved to this day — was one of the major scandals that rocked Hollywood in the early '20s. Other festival highlights include [...]...

Article by Cliff Saxton

Cliff Saxton is the Archivist for Micds (Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School), known as St. Louis Country Day School when Vincent Price attended in the 1920′s. I recently asked Mr. Saxton to write an article about Vincent Price’s days at Country Day in honor of Vincentennial, the Vincent Price 100th Birthday Celebration. There is information here I have never seen in any biographies of Vincent Price and I thank Mr. Saxton for taking the time to research and write this article, which is making its premiere here at We Are Movie Geeks

In 1922, St. Louis Country Day School welcomed a young man who would become one of the school’s most illustrious graduates — and whose celebrated acting career would be encouraged on the stage of the school’s auditorium. In the fall of that year, Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. was among 30 boys...

At one point in the early 1930s, Constance Bennett was the highest-paid actress in Hollywood. (In her early Warner Bros. movies, Bette Davis was clearly modeled after Bennett.) Following a series of risque — but generally dismal — tearjerkers, mostly at Rko, Bennett's stardom had all but fizzled out by 1935. Turner Classic Movies will be showing several of such Bennett vehicles on Friday early morning/afternoon, in addition to the comedies Topper, Merrily We Live, and Topper Takes a Trip, which revived the actress' career in the late '30s. Topper, which co-stars Cary Grant and Roland Young, is enjoyable, but it needed an Ernst Lubitsch to fully bring it to life. Topper Takes a Trip, though much inferior to the original, is harmless enough. What Price Hollywood? is the best one among the tearjerkers. Directed by George Cukor, this tale of a waitress who finds success and heartbreak in Hollywood was...

What better way to start the New Year than by remembering the past? No, not war and assorted catastrophes, but beauty and romance. The clip above features a montage of about two dozen actresses from the studio era. See how many you can recognize. Here’s some assistance: Anne Baxter, Anne Shirley, Claire Bloom, Constance Bennett, Eleanor Parker, Frances Dee, Gail Russell, Janet Gaynor, Jean Arthur, Jean Peters, Joan Bennett, Kathryn Grayson, Laraine Day, Lilli Palmer, Linda Darnell, Lupe Velez, Madeleine Carroll, Margaret Sullavan, Maureen O’Sullivan, Miiko Taka, Norma Shearer, Patricia Neal, Paulette Goddard, Priscilla Lane, Sally Eilers, Teresa Wright. There’s also one I didn’t recognize, wearing a veil over her head. Colleen Gray? Among the included films are — some of those are [...]...

They can be harmful. They can be helpful. They can be annoying as all get-out. The film world has given us everything in the spectrum of ghost virtue from Bruce Willis to the creepy girl from Ringu. Today, in honor of The Lovely Bones, we salute the good guys, the friendly ghosts who ride high along with Casper in the act of moral solidarity.

10. Heart And Souls

Anything starring Robert Downey, Jr. is worth checking out in my book, but this comedy was surprisingly enjoyable. Downey plays a guy used by four ghosts to reconcile their lives before moving on into the afterlife. The catch is, Downey is less than enthusiastic, but finds himself the catalyst for something bigger than himself and goes along for the ride. The cast is comprised of several well-known actors making the film that much more enjoyable.

9. Truly, Madly, Deeply

The 1991 charming, English love story of a woman,...

Variety reports that Disney has acquired the rights to the 1937 comedy Topper with an eye on turning the remake into a vehicle for Steve Martin. The original starred Cary Grant and Constance Bennett as a deceased couple who are determined to shake up the life of their friend Topper (Roland Young), a stuffy banker. Martin's Bringing Down the House director, Adam Shankman, is slated to produce; no word on if he will direct as well. Martin will shoot another remake, Cheaper By the Dozen, before moving onto Topper.