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Teresa Wright ca. 1945. Teresa Wright movies on TCM: 'The Little Foxes,' 'The Pride of the Yankees' Pretty, talented Teresa Wright made a relatively small number of movies: 28 in all, over the course of more than half a century. Most of her films have already been shown on Turner Classic Movies, so it's more than a little disappointing that TCM will not be presenting Teresa Wright rarities such as The Imperfect Lady and The Trouble with Women – two 1947 releases co-starring Ray Milland – on Aug. 4, '15, a "Summer Under the Stars" day dedicated to the only performer to date to have been shortlisted for Academy Awards for their first three film roles. TCM's Teresa Wright day would also have benefited from a presentation of The Search for Bridey Murphy (1956), an unusual entry – parapsychology, reincarnation – in the Wright movie canon and/or Roseland (1977), a little-remembered entry in James Ivory's canon.

Stars: Pam Grier, Booker Bradshaw, Robert DoQui, William Elliott, Allan Arbus, Sid Haig, Barry Cahill, Lee de Broux, Ruben Moreno, Lisa Farringer, Carol Locatell, Linda Haynes, John Perak | Written and Directed by Jack Hill

If there is one thing about Quentin Tarantino we can be sure of, it’s that he loves movies. For film fans who don’t know too much about the “Blaxploitation” genre they may not have picked up the importance of Jackie Brown, or the fact that the movie was built around one actress, Pam Grier… To look at the reason for this, all you have to do is look no further than Arrow Video’s latest release Coffy.

Seen as one of the best films of the genre, Coffy (Pam Grier) is a nurse pushed to finding vengeance against the pimps, junkies and drug dealers who led to the hospitalisation of her sister. Playing out...

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,...

Shirley Jones Movies: Innocent virgins and sex workers galore (photo: Shirley Jones and Burt Lancaster in ‘Elmer Gantry’) (See previous post: “Shirley Jones: From Book to Movies.”) I haven’t watched The Cheyenne Social Club (1970), a comedy Western directed by Gene Kelly, and starring 62-year-old James Stewart as a cowpoke who inherits an establishment that turns out to be a popular house of prostitution. Henry Fonda plays Stewart’s partner. And I’m sure Shirley Jones, as one of the sex workers, looks lovely in the film. Hopefully, director Kelly gave this likable, talented actress the chance to do more than just stand around looking pretty. But then again … For all purposes, The Cheyenne Social Club ended Shirley Jones’ film stardom; that same year she turned to TV and The Partridge Family. Jones would return to films only nine years later, as one of several stars (among them Michael Caine,...

Another pair of offerings from In2Film’s Roger Corman Collection and this time we venture forward into the 70’s, to two movies that span the spectrum of Corman’s career as a film producer. From the good: Grand Theft Auto, which marked the directorial debut of Happy Days actor Ron Howard; to the not so good: Deathsport.

Grand Theft Auto

Stars: Ron Howard, Nancy Morgan, Elizabeth Rogers, Barry Cahill, Rance Howard, Paul Linke, Marion Ross | Written and Directed by Ron Howard

This amiable screwball comedy is part road movie, part chase movie and part destruction derby, and concerns one young man’s elopement with his heiress girlfriend from La to Vegas while her father, her fiancé and various others are in hot pursuit hoping to prevent the forthcoming nuptials. However, the car crashes are the real stars of a film that marked the directorial debut of one of Hollywood’s most successful filmmakers.