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Hollywood has always been a boy's club. Worse than that, it's been a haven of sexual abuse. The town has buildings and theaters named after the likes of Columbia Pictures co-founder Harry Cohn and 20th Century Fox co-founder Daryl F. Zanuck, both of whom were notorious for coercing (or attempting to coerce) female stars into sex in exchange for work. For all of the breathtakingly gifted women who made it through Hollywood's sexist gauntlet to become movie stars, you can't help but wonder how many singular talents got destroyed by the town's monstrous gatekeepers.

Because talent truly didn't matter to these ghouls. They just wanted, in their view, a dazzling dame who could light up the screen with their looks and sign a contract nowhere near commensurate with their value to the studio. Some of the women in their employ could stand up to them. Joan Crawford once shut Cohn down by saying,...

Edward Berger, hot from his double-whammy Best Film and Outstanding British Film wins for Conclave at the Ee BAFTA Film Awards, wanted to stop by the Searchlight after-party at Soho House’s Greek Street to laud Rising Star winner David Jonsson.

“He’s not a show-off,” an impressed Berger tells me after greeting Jonsson.

“[It] tells you a lot. Feet on the ground, incredibly laid back and I wanted to congratulate him,” Berger adds as he watches the Rye Lane and Alien: Romulus actor being feted by a group that included Olivia Homan, his agent at United Talent, and Ellie Norton his publicist at Track Publicity.

Berger notes that he was taken by a comment Jonsson made during his acceptance speech.

“Star? I don’t know, but rising, I guess,” was the Jonsson line that Berger favored.

David Jonsson with his BAFTA mask. Baz Bamigboye/Deadline

“I liked his humility,” the filmmaker tells me.

Sydney Sweeney is getting her turn as a Hitchcock blonde…or at least the chance to portray one.

Sweeney will play Old Hollywood actress Kim Novak in a feature titled “Scandalous,” and the project will be the directorial debut for “Sing Sing” star Colman Domingo. Sweeney shared the news update as originally reported by Deadline to her Instagram story on Tuesday, October 22.

Also cast alongside Sweeney is “Industry” actor David Jonsson, who will portray Rat Pack legend Sammy Davis Jr.

Reps for Sweeney, Domingo, and studio Miramax did not respond to a request for comment.

The feature, which is set up at Miramax, will tell the story of Novak and Sammy Davis Jr.’s clandestine affair. Novak and Davis first met as guests on “The Steve Allen Show.” Their relationship was later leaked by a gossip columnist in 1958, which threatened Novak’s career at Columbia Pictures. Then studio head Harry Cohn...

Sydney Sweeney is to play Kim Novak in 'Scandalous'.The 27-year-old star will take on the role of the 'Vertigo' icon in the flick that will tell the story of the love affair the actress had with the legendary dancer and Rat Pack singer Sammy Davis Jr., as portrayed by David Jonsson, in 1957.The Miramax movie, which marks Sweeney's 'Euphoria' co-star Colman Domingo's directorial debut, will enter production once the pair have finished working on the third season of the HBO drama series.As well as starring in the picture, the 'Anyone But You' actress will be producing 'Scandalous' alongside Tani Cohen and Bobby Rock, while Matthew Fantaci writes the script. Davis Jr. and Novak met in 1956 on 'The Steve Allen Show' and later entered a romantic relationship.The interracial couple were the subject of heavy criticism both in and out of...

Colman Domingo is set to make his feature directorial debut with “Scandalous,” a period drama about the 1950s romance between movie star Kim Novak and singer Sammy Davis Jr., and the bigoted scrutiny that the pair faced once their relationship came to light. Sydney Sweeney and David Jonsson are in talks to play the two leads.

Miramax is working to fast track the project, which remains in early stages of development. Producers have hopes to shoot next year after Domingo and Sweeney have finished filming the third season of HBO’s “Euphoria.”

As it went, Novak and Davis first connected when they both appeared as guests on “The Steve Allen Show” in 1956. The two continued to meet, with Davis making visits to the set of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” during the next year. They met again at a Thanksgiving charity ball in California, which led to the pair spending the holidays together.

Exclusive: Colman Domingo will make his directorial debut in Scandalous, a fast tracked Miramax drama about the clandestine love affair between film star Kim Novak and singer/dancer and film star Sammy Davis Jr. in 1957. Sydney Sweeney will play Novak, and David Jonsson will play Davis Jr.

Plan is to shoot the film — imagine a movie about classic Hollywood being shot in Los Angeles — when Domingo and Sweeney complete Season 3 of the HBO series Euphoria.

Much the way she did with the sleeper hit Anyone But You, Sweeney was very active in putting this one together and she will be a producer along with Tani Cohen and Bobby Roth, with Jon Levin exec producing. Matthew Fantaci wrote the script.

Before he became Miramax CEO, Jon Glickman originated the project at Panoramic, and remained high on it. Novak, star of Vertigo and Rat Pack member Davis Jr were at the peak...

American filmmaker Frank Capra began his career in the silent movies, helping to showcase and shape comedian Harry Langdon's gentle character for Mack Sennett. He went on to have his first big hit with the early talkie It Happened One Night, a wonderfully funny rom-com that won all 5 top Oscars in 1935. He followed this with a series of still-popular comedies with social messages that were also made for Harry Cohn at Columbia Pictures, including Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), You Cant Take It With You (1938), and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). Respectively, these films argue (with their laughs) for the virtues of harmless eccentricity, humanity, and simplicity.

She was the first American actress to marry a prince, the first actress to dance with both Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, one of the first pin-up girls of the 1940s and the first celebrity to bring awareness to Alzheimer’s Disease. She was the “Love Goddess,” Rita Hayworth.

Hayworth was born on October 17, 1918, in Brooklyn as Margarita Carmen Cansino, into a family of Spanish dancers. Although she later claimed she didn’t care for it, Hayworth started dancing at a young age to please her father. They performed together as the Dancing Cansinos from the time she was 12-years-old. She began landing small film roles in her teens under the name Rita Cansino, eventually earning a contract with Columbia Pictures. There she was “Americanized” by changing her last name to her Irish mother’s maiden name of Hayworth, dying her dark hair red and having electrolysis to raise her hairline.

Vanity Street.Broke and homeless, a young woman hurls a brick through the window of a drugstore, hoping to go to jail because at least “they feed you there.” Instead of arresting her, a kindly cop gets her a job as a showgirl at the theater next door; soon she’s wearing furs and fending off passes from top-hatted stage-door Johnnies. So it goes in lightning-paced B movies such as Vanity Street (1932), directed by Poverty Row maestro Nick Grinde. The plot may be flimsy, but Max Ophuls could have been proud of the long, breezy tracking shot that glides past the windows of the drugstore, packed with a motley crowd of chorus girls, costumed actors, and burlesque comedians. This casually terrific sequence is representative of the treasures that were to be found in the retrospective honoring the 2024 centenary of Columbia Pictures at this year’s Locarno Film Festival. Most of the films were short.

The Locarno Film Festival is justly renowned for its retrospectives, and this year is no exception. But rather than an individual director or star, this edition is dedicated to a studio: Columbia Pictures with “The Lady with the Torch” celebrating the studio’s centenary.

With 44 films from well-known titles such as Orson Welles’s “The Lady from Shanghai” (1947) and Fritz Lang’s “The Big Heat” (1953) to more obscure gems like Frank Borzage’s “Man’s Castle” (1933) and Earl McEvoy’s “The Killer that Stalked New York” (1950), curator Ehsan Khoshbakht has created what he calls an “unofficial history” of the studio in its heyday, as controversial president Harry Cohn dragged Columbia from poverty row to Academy success.

Variety sat down to speak with Khoshbakht (who is also the co-director of Bologna’s Cinema Ritrovato Festival) about the retrospective.

Variety: What role does the retrospective play in Locarno?

Khoshbakht: Very recently, I was...

Founded in 1946, Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival is one of the world’s longest-running film festivals, known for its adventurous programming, exciting retrospectives, and nightly open-air screenings in the Piazza Grande, capable of seating 8,000 spectators. The latter is by no means the only screening spot, but it’s the location most associated with the festival.

Hosting world premieres and special screenings of highlights from Cannes, SXSW, and other early-year festivals, this year’s Piazza Grande selection includes the launch of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette portrait “The Flood,” starring Guillaume Canet and Mélanie Laurent; Bérénice Béjo-led thriller “Mexico 86”; Mohammad Rasoulof’s Cannes prizewinner “The Seed of the Sacred Fig”; actor Paz Vega’s directorial debut “Rita”; and the world premiere of Tarsem Singh’s restored recut of “The Fall.”

The Piazza Grande often showcases more mainstream fare, but Locarno has always prided itself on providing a less hostile...

On a recent July afternoon, the ever-mercurial Tom Rothman arrives in good spirits for a tour of Columbia Pictures’ archives in honor of the studio’s 100th anniversary. “Ask a lot of questions, because after this, I must go back to work,” says Rothman, Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group chairman. “This is way more fun than getting yelled at by agents.”

Naturally, Rothman — one of Hollywood’s longest-running studio chiefs, who’s been in his current gig since 2015 and has overseen the most profitable period in Columbia’s recent history — starts off by noting the costumes from marquee franchise Spider-Man. By his calculation, the collection houses more than 30 superhero suits at the archive from various Spider-Man movies.

“I recognize this very well — it was worth $2 billion at the box office to us,” says Rothman, pointing to a suit worn by Tom Holland in 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home. Both that...

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It often feels like movie marketing is an unimaginative, flood-the-zone proposition in our age of pre-sold, IP-driven blockbusters. But as we've recently been reminded via the carefully crafted ad campaigns for smaller genre efforts like "MaXXXine" and "Longlegs", marketing departments are still a vital part of the business. How you sell each movie has certainly changed with the evolution of the media landscape, but even the biggest films will always need some kind of push. After all, audiences aren't likely to flock to a movie that has zero presence in the marketplace.

There really isn't an exception to this rule. The closest you're liable to find might be the August 5, 1953 release of Fred Zinnemann's "From Here to Eternity." Based on James Jones' critically acclaimed novel set at the U.S. Army's Schofield Barracks in Hawaii just prior to the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor,...

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences CEO Bill Kramer has had his contract renewed and will continue to lead the organization behind the Oscars through July 2028, taking him through the Academy’s centennial. His contract was up for renewal in 2025, but the organization said it was approved one year early “due to [Kramer’s] exceptional leadership and significant contributions.”

“Bill is a dynamic and transformational leader, and the Board of Governors agrees he is the ideal person to continue to broaden the Academy’s reach and impact on our international film community and successfully guide the organization into our next 100 years,” said Academy President Janet Yang in a statement.

Kramer took over as CEO of the Academy in June 2022, replacing Dawn Hudson, who had led the organization for a decade. He first joined the Academy in 2012 and became the director of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in January 2020. Since becoming CEO,...

Pondering Will Smith’s recent triumph at a local Cinemark and Donald Trump’s post-conviction surge, I got to thinking about “movie-think.”

You know, the way we’ve become accustomed, after watching hundreds and hundreds of mainstream films, to thinking the way the movies do. The real villain is someone in power. Anyone too pretty, male or female, is suspect. Things will get worse, much worse, before they get better. Our hero is almost always an outsider — someone who is knocked off a pedestal, beaten down, and kicked around, all the way to the bottom of the second act, before rising in triumph or existential martyrdom (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) to win our hearts and minds forever.

From our heroes, real or cinematic, we forgive and even expect transgression — a misbegotten slap, a tawdry liaison and all that comes with it. In movie-think, we honor the renegades,...

Following backlash from a group of Jewish activists, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles announced Monday it will revise its new exhibit on Hollywood’s Jewish roots.

The museum noted in a statement to the The Hollywood Reporter on Monday that it had “heard the concerns from members of the Jewish community” and that it was “committed to making changes to the exhibition to address them.”

“We will be implementing the first set of changes immediately — they will allow us to tell these important stories without using phrasing that may unintentionally reinforce stereotypes,” the museum said, also noting they are “convening an advisory group of experts from leading museums focused on the Jewish community, civil rights and the history of other marginalized groups to advise us on complex questions about context and any necessary additions to the exhibition’s narrative.”

Days earlier, the institution had also noted...

The Academy Museum has vowed to modify language in its new “Hollywoodland” exhibit dedicated to the Jewish founders of Hollywood amid outcry labeling the exhibit antisemitic.

“We have heard the concerns from members of the Jewish community regarding some components of our exhibition ‘Hollywoodland: Jewish Founders and the Making of a Movie Capital,’” the Academy Museum said on Monday in a statement obtained by IndieWire. “We take these concerns seriously and are committed to making changes to the exhibition to address them. We will be implementing the first set of changes immediately — they will allow us to tell these important stories without using phrasing that may unintentionally reinforce stereotypes. This will also help to eliminate any ambiguities. In addition to these updates, we are convening an advisory group of experts from leading museums focused on the Jewish community, civil rights, and the history of other marginalized groups to advise us...

“That movie was the President’s idea, not mine, but it was a demand, not a suggestion.”

The speaker was Jack Warner in a 1947 foreshadowing of his Donald Trumpian style. I recalled his remarks this week as I drove onto the Warner Bros lot, the fabled arena where Warner long reigned.

In his heyday, Warner was a Trump pre-clone in terms of temperament and rhetoric – a man who boasted about his mental acuity yet, to Hollywood’s power players, seemed occasionally unhinged.

I was visiting Warner Bros this week to spend some time with David Zaslav, a figure who, in temperament and politics, is the mirror opposite of Warner but whose empire is nonetheless a product of Warner’s erratic vision. Some believe that Zaslav’s studio – Hollywood in general – might still glean some insight from its founder’s idiosyncrasies.

A career maverick, Warner promoted gangster movies like Public Enemy...

“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...

Indie producer Harry Cohn, brother Jack and their associate Joe Brandt created the CBC Film Sales Company in 1918. And on Jan. 10, 1924, the trio formed the Poverty Row studio, Columbia Pictures. According to Enclyclopedia.com, by the mid-20s “Cohn had gained reputation as one of the industry’s toughest businessmen.” That’s putting it mildly.

Though “B” movies and series such as The Three Stooges, “Blondie” and “The Lone Wolf” were the bread and butter of the studio, Cohn slowly attracted top talent and directors and turned such newcomers as Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, William Holden and Kim Novak into stars.

Frank Capra changed the fortunes of the studio. Signing with Columbia in 1928, he made 25 films for Columbia. His optimistic, common man movies attracted critics and audiences alike during the Depression. His 1934 screwball comedy “It Happened One Night,” penned by Robert Riskin and starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, swept the Oscars winning five.

Sony Pictures Entertainment is marking Columbia Pictures’ 100th anniversary with a new centennial logo inspired by the historic “Lady With the Torch” iconography.

Ahead of Columbia’s anniversary celebration on Jan. 10, 2024, the new logo has an enhanced glow to the torch to symbolize the vibrancy of the Hollywood studio’s history, Sony said in a statement.

“There is one thing that separates a major studio from all other content producers: history. At Columbia, that history is reflected in the countless cultural talismans created by thousands of people over now 100 years. All of us at Columbia are proud of that legacy and honored to celebrate it,” Tom Rothman, chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures’ Motion Picture Group, said in a statement on Tuesday.

The studio behind classic Hollywood movies like It Happened One Night, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and You Can’t Take it With You was founded by brothers...

It's hard to believe it's been 70 years since Fred Zinneman's "From Here to Eternity" came out. Not that we were all there of course, but time has been really kind to the all-star, Best Picture-winning drama. Unlike many of the rah-rah war films emerging from America during and post-World War II, "From Here to Eternity" argues not that war is hell — since most of the movie takes place during peace time — but that men, even in the army, are subconsciously determined to make life hell whether there's a war on or not.

Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster, and Frank Sinatra star as soldiers stationed in Hawaii immediately prior to World War II, whose stubborn pride and barely contained insecurities lead directly to many avoidable tragedies. Clift plays Private Prewitt, a formerly promising boxer who refuses to box again after accidentally blinding a fellow soldier, and endures criminal abuse just because...

Character actor Michael Lerner, known for his Oscar-nominated role in Joel and Ethan Coen's "Barton Fink," has died at the age of 81. Lerner passed away on Saturday, April 8, 2023. His nephew, "The Goldbergs" star Sam Lerner, confirmed the news in an Instagram post the following day (via Variety).

Michael Lerner was born in Brooklyn, New York, on June 22, 1941. In the 1960s, he appeared on sitcoms like "The Brady Bunch" and "The Doris Day Show" and studied at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theatre before landing his first film role in "Alex in Wonderland" in 1970. In the decade that followed, Lerner would continue juggling movies, TV shows, and TV movies, making a number of guest appearances on shows like "Ironside," "The Bob Newhart Show," "M*A*S*H," "The Odd Couple," "Starsky and Hutch," "The Rockford Files," "Kojak," and "Wonder Woman."

In the 1980s, Lerner costarred in "The Postman Always Rings Twice...

Auteurs and Hollywood don't always mix. Stanley Kubrick put some considerable distance between himself and the studio system after being required to stick closely to Dalton Trumbo's "Spartacus" script in 1960 — heading to England to secure funding and creative control on 1962's "Lolita." But he wasn't the first American filmmaker to flee his homeland in search of artistic freedom and funding.

Orson Welles is perhaps the ultimate example of a director clashing with a filmmaking industry unaligned with his sophisticated artistic ambitions. After his first film, "Citizen Kane," debuted in 1941 and proved a financial failure, Welles had to fight for financing and artistic control on future projects. Rko, which had funded "Citizen Kane," renegotiated Welles' contract to remove the unprecedented creative control he was initially afforded. And even though the film would eventually become regarded as one of, if not the finest movie ever made, the director would regularly find...

Ted Donaldson, who starred as Bud Anderson on the original radio version of Father Knows Best and as Neely Nolan in the beloved family drama A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the first feature directed by Elia Kazan, has died. He was 89.

Donaldson died Wednesday of complications from a fall in his Echo Park apartment in January, his friend Thomas Bruno told The Hollywood Reporter.

In his big-screen debut, Donaldson portrayed a boy who gets his pet caterpillar Curly to dance when he plays “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby” on the harmonica in the comedy fantasy Once Upon a Time (1944), starring Cary Grant and Janet Blair.

He also starred as Danny Mitchell in eight B-movies from Columbia Pictures that revolved around a German shepherd named Rusty. The first one, Adventures of Rusty (1945), featured Ace the Wonder Dog.

An only child, Donaldson was born in Brooklyn on Aug. 20, 1933. His father was...

In 1949, John Wayne was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Allan Dwan's war film "Sands of Iwo Jima." Despite several thoughtful antiwar films that preceded it -- specifically "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "The Best Years of Our Lives" -- "Iwo Jima" came at a time when patriotic, downright jingoistic movies about World War II were coming into vogue. In particular, 1949 saw the release of films like "Battleground" and "Twelve O'Clock High," both films about the nobility of war and the heroism of soldiers. Both those films were nominated for Best Picture, although they lost to the political corruption drama "All the King's Men." Wayne himself lost Best Actor to Broderick Crawford, the star of "King's Men." 

In 1969, Wayne looked back on "Iwo Jima" in an interview with Roger Ebert, and posited that he lost his Oscar for political reasons. A...

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the Waldorf Declaration, which on November 25, 1947, officially launched the Hollywood Blacklist. On that day, the heads of the major studios, with a few notable exceptions, agreed after a contentious two-day conference at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City to ban the Hollywood Ten and to not “knowingly” employ Communists.

And so began one of the darkest chapters in Hollywood’s history.

Related Story Hollywood Blacklist: 75th Anniversary Of The Waldorf Declaration – Photo Gallery Related Story Donald Anthony St. Claire Dies: 'The Amazing Race' Oldest Competitor Was 87 Related Story Irene Cara Remembered By Colleagues, Friends And Fans

Just a few weeks earlier, the Hollywood Ten had denounced and refused to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee and later were sent to federal prison for contempt of Congress.

“We will forthwith discharge or suspend without compensation those in our employ,” the Waldorf Declaration stated,...

The first movie to directly confront McCarthyism! Or so said the editorials touting this ‘Long-Awaited Screen Event’ in which ‘Bette Davis Hits the Screen in a Cyclone of Dramatic Fury!’ The storm of the title was based on a real activist in Oklahoma who lost her job for promoting equal rights. Bette’s polite librarian is victimized by small-minded civic types; a subplot depicts the traumatic reaction of one of her patrons, a child expected to despise her as a traitor to the country. Daniel Taradash’s movie is an excellent starting point to discuss the thorny dramatic subgenre of liberal social issue movies.

Storm Center

Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] 155

1956 / B&w / 1:78 widescreen / 86 min. / Street Date September 30, 2022 / Available from / au 39.95

Starring:

Bette Davis, Brian Keith, Kim Hunter, Paul Kelly, Joe Mantell, Kevin Coughlin, Sallie Brophie, Howard Wierum, Curtis Cooksey, Michael Raffetto, Joseph Kearns, Edward Platt, Kathryn Grant, Howard Wendell, Malcolm Atterbury,...

If "From Here to Eternity" has one defining legacy, it would be the tapestry of characters and storylines it presents. Following three separate threads, which are all given a time in the spotlight, every actor in the core ensemble gets a complete arc. In fact, the broad attention to its characters would reflect in the career opportunities that opened for each of those actors following the movie's critical and box office success.

Like any movie about Pearl Harbor, "From Here to Eternity" is a tragedy. For 1953, and especially with the Hays Code restricting its use of violence and obscenity, its depiction of the Japanese attack in its last few minutes is brutal, with enemy planes shown gunning down soldiers point-blank. But even with these brief moments of carnage, the more prominently featured tragedies are in the characters' personal lives.

Private Angelo Maggio

When Columbia Pictures purchased the film rights for James Jones' 1951 novel,...

The rules of survival in Hollywood have always fascinated me. “Consistency is the key – always present yourself to studios as a total bitch,” Bette Davis once confided. “Never delude yourself into thinking that a star can become a loyal personal friend,” advised Billy Wilder. “Since studios always lie, a producer’s mandate is to come up with bigger lies,” said David O. Selznick.

As a collector of Hollywood war stories, I was pleased this week to discover a new book (741 pages) with the intimidating title Hollywood: The Oral History – one that has greatly expanded my inventory of intrigue.

Over the course of the last 50 years AFI (the American Film Institute) has semi-secretly recorded, and now published, interviews with accomplished stars and filmmakers, thus creating an intimate Hollywood history told in first person (HarperCollins is the publisher).

Approaching a book of this size as summer reading, I decided to focus not on thoughtful analysis,...

This grouping of Bogart’s Columbia output has one bona fide noir, a pair of exotic ‘romantic intrigue’ thrillers and three social issue pictures. It’s a good set, with films directed by John Cromwell, Nicholas Ray and Mark Robson, and with leading ladies Lizabeth Scott, Florence Marley, Marta Toren, Jody Lawrance and Jan Sterling. And the Powerhouse Indicator extras are especially well curated. Watch out — it’s Region B only.

Columbia Noir #5 Humphrey Bogart

Region B Blu-ray

Dead Reckoning, Knock on Any Door, Tokyo Joe,

Sirocco, The Family Secret, The Harder They Fall

Powerhouse Indicator

1947-1956 / B&w / 1:37 Academy & 1:85 widescreen

Street Date June 27, 2022 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £49.99

Starring or Executive Produced by Humphrey Bogart

For an established actor who really didn’t break through as a starring leading man until age 41, Humphrey Bogart sure gave us a legacy of prominent movies. As movie stars go he...

Powerhouse Indicator moves forward to their fourth fancy box of noirs from the studio of Harry Cohn, six pictures stretching from the postwar boom to the end of the original classic noir era. This time around we have some notable directors, and a nice selection of stars — Dennis O’Keefe, George Murphy, Fred MacMurray, Kim Novak, Jean Simmons, Rory Calhoun and Richard Conte. Kim Novak makes her starring debut as a femme fatale; noir icon Richard Conte shines in a movie that marks a turn into a new kind of existential, paranoid thriller. And speaking of paranoid, we again get to lighten up with another selection of theme-appropriate Three Stooges shorts.

Columbia Noir #4

Region B Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1948-1957 / B&w + Color / 1:85 widescreen, 1:37 Academy / Street Date September 27, 2021 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / 49.99

Starring: Louis Hayward, Dennis O’Keefe; George Murphy; Fred MacMurray, Kim Novak; Jean Simmons, Rory Calhoun; Dennis O’Keefe,...

“It’s strange, but some movies present themselves almost entirely in your head.”—Joel Coen

“I’ll show you a life of the mind!”—Charlie Meadows, a.k.a. Karl Mundt, a.k.a. “Madman” Mundt

Everyone knows about the telegram. It’s an apocryphal Hollywood story, with the actual letter lost to time. But its recipient Ben Hecht quotes it in his memoir, A Child of the Century. The famed journalist, novelist and playwright was toiling away in New York when he received a missive straight from Babylon, courtesy...

“Hey you guys!!!” And at the risk of either being non-inclusive or sexist, “you gals, too”! There’s a new feature-length documentary arriving in theatres this weekend that certainly breaks the preconceived notions of what many consider “film homework”. Yes, there are a considerable amount of “talking heads”, but the movie is far from “dull and dry”. Now, that’s due in large part to the doc’s subject matter (hence all those “talkers” on camera). This is a prime example of this film genre’s popular “subset”, the “show biz” documentary. Last year saw two great entertainment profiles on the Go-Go’s, the Bee Gees, and Natalie Wood. Now, this look at the life and career of one of the latter’s co-stars will no doubt earn similar accolades this year (along with another out today). Speaking of accolades, this lady’s amassed so many, even joining the elite group known as EGOTs.

Actor Gloria Henry, who advanced from B movies in the 1940s to an iconicTV mom on the CBS sitcom “Dennis the Menace,” died Saturday, one day after her 98th birthday.

Henry’s death was revealed Sunday in an Instagram post from her daughter, Erin Ellwood an interior designer and longtime production designer. “She was such an incredible woman in so many ways,” Ellwood wrote.

Henry played Alice Mitchell, the endlessly patient, shirtwaist dress-wearing mother of the mischievous title character created as a newspaper cartoon by Hank Ketcham. The TV series adaptation ran from 1959 to 1963 with Jay North in the title role. Henry’s co-star Herbert Anderson also became an iconic TV dad with his horn rim glasses, sharp-angled suits and V-neck sweaters.

Henry maintained a steady presence in TV through the mid-1960s. But there was a long gap in her resume while she took time out from acting to...

Howard Hawks’ early sound picture is a worthy prison drama — with top performances from Walter Huston and Boris Karloff, both just as their film careers began to take off. Huston shows the screen how a stage actor can take command: his Da-turned warden character is corrupt yet retains his air of authority. Karloff’s convict seethes with raw menace, and Hawks uses him better than anyone except James Whale. That ‘other’ Code, the Production Code, found this show to be unbearably tense — even though all the brutality happens off-screen, violence is soaked into every scene.

The Criminal Code

Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1930 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 97 min. / Street Date March 22, 2021 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £15.99

Starring: Walter Huston, Phillips Holmes, Constance Cummings, Boris Karloff, DeWitt Jennings, Mary Doran, Ethel Wales, Clark Marshall, Arthur Hoyt, John St. Polis, Paul Porcasi, Andy Devine.

Cinematography: James Wong Howe, Ted Tetzlaff

Film Editor: Edward Curtis...

“Since studios keep making remakes, why don’t they at least remake them better?” Billy Wilder had a right to ask me that question 20 years ago, since the many remakes of his movies never matched the originals.

The Wilder conundrum seems relevant today when the studios and streamers are announcing more and more remakes. Paramount says it’s developing Love Story, Flashdance and The Parallax View, among others. It is not remaking The Godfather, which went into production 50 years ago. But there are two projects in the works about the making of the movie, and there also is Francis Coppola’s refreshed Godfather III, made in 1990 and re-edited by Coppola now out under his preferred title Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone.

While I share Wilder’s skepticism about the remake business, a case could be made that the entire gangster genre deserves a revisit.

Rita Moreno’s most indelible screen moment, which had her and a “West Side Story” ensemble sizing up the pros and cons of their adopted U.S. homeland, remains an eternally clever musical argument over whether “America” is a dream or nightmare for immigrants, settling in at a 50/50 split. The balance is skewed more along the lines of 80/20, in favor of dream, for the star herself in “Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It.” Premiering at Sundance, the documentary from the theatrical wing of “American Masters” cheerfully jumps from one heartening career reinvention to the next, with sobering lulls to ponder what an even more prolific filmography she might have had without profligate racism and sexism standing in her path.

The list of executive producers includes longtime pal and partner-in-social-consciousness Norman Lear, as well as the man who’s followed in Moreno’s footsteps as the...

Robert Aldrich promised no-holds barred rough-tough dramas, and his first two Associates & Aldrich productions certainly hit hard. This play adaptation shows its director’s strength (no-flinching full shock impact) and weakness (theatrical overplaying) in full measure, but the unrestrained performances of Jack Palance and Eddie Albert are unforgettable. The main event can’t have pleased the Pentagon: shooting one’s own officer in combat. Plus, Lee Marvin and Richard Jaeckel get in early innings for their future work in Aldrichs’s The Dirty Dozen.

Attack

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1956 / B&w / 1:85 widescreen / 107 min. / Street Date December 1, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Jack Palance, Eddie Albert, Lee Marvin, William Smithers, Buddy Ebsen, Robert Strauss, Richard Jaeckel, Jon Shepodd, Peter van Eyck, Jimmy Goodwin, Steven Geray, Strother Martin.

Cinematography: Joseph Biroc

Film Editor: Michael Luciano

Original Music: Frank Devol

Written by James Poe from the play Fragile Fox by Norman Brooks...

Exclusive: The hot movie package du jour is Scandalous! This is a drama that has Jeremy Pope — freshly minted Emmy nominee for the Netflix series Hollywood — to play Sammy Davis Jr and Janet Mock (Hollywood and Pose) to direct a drama about the interracial love affair between the entertainer and actress Kim Novak, who at the time was the top box office draw in Hollywood.

Pic will be produced by Jonathan Glickman, who is producing the upcoming Aretha Franklin film Respect, and Jon Levin. Glickman has an MGM deal and Mock one at Netflix, but they are shopping this one wide and the plan is to shoot this fall in Los Angeles and set it up with a distributor as they are locking an actress to play Novak. Mock, who is writer, director and EP on both Hollywood and Pose, will polish the script by Matthew Fantaci.

The drama is...

For producer-director John Ford Columbia Studios was apparently a calm port in a hostile movie climate. Away from the bankability guaranteed by John Wayne, Ford never quite regained the power of his earlier triumphs, from the silent era to his socially conscious classics at Fox. The four Columbia-controlled pictures presented on Powerhouse Indicator’s lavishly appointed disc set consist of two winners and (for this viewer) a pair of odd ducks. But the quality of his filmmaking remained consistent.

John Ford at Columbia 1935-1958

The Whole Town’s Talking, The Long Gray Line, Gideon’s Day, The Last Hurrah

Region B Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1935-1958 / Color & B&w / 1:37 Academy, 2:55 widescreen, 1:85 widescreen / / Street Date April 27, 2020 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £ 42.99

Starring: Edward G. Robinson, Jean Arthur; Tyrone Power, Maureen O’Hara; Jack Hawkins, Anna Massey; Spencer Tracy, Jeffrey Hunter.

Cinematography: Joseph August; Charles Lawton Jr., Charles Lang; Frederick A.

Countless Oscars parties, many scandals, and guests ranging from Howard Hughes through Led Zeppelin made Chateau Marmont a West Hollywood staple since its 1929 debut.

But the recent coronavirus shutdown has knocked out many hotels and restaurants around the world, and the Chateau Marmont is apparently not immune. Numerous reports and a statement from the labor union for the venue’s workers indicate the hotel has terminated nearly all of its staff, throwing many longtime employees out of work.

More from DeadlineCry, California! The Oscar Visitors And Their Glamour Myth Can't Come Too SoonJohn Krasinski & Aaron Sorkin Chateau Marmont Project Back In The WorksHotelier Andre Balazs Accused Of Groping Actress Amanda Anka At Event

Local 11, the union for Southern California hospitality workers, claimed hotel management notified employees on March 19 that they were being let go, effective the following day. Although no precise numbers were given, the union said nearly the entire workforce was terminated.

She was the first American actress to marry a prince, the first actress to dance with both Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, one of the first pin-up girls of the 1940s and the first celebrity to bring awareness to Alzheimer’s Disease. She was the “Love Goddess,” Rita Hayworth.

Hayworth was born on October 17, 1918, in Brooklyn as Margarita Carmen Cansino, into a family of Spanish dancers. Although she later claimed she didn’t care for it, Hayworth started dancing at a young age to please her father. They performed together as the Dancing Cansinos from the time she was 12-years-old. She began landing small film roles in her teens under the name Rita Cansino, eventually earning a contract with Columbia Pictures. There she was “Americanized” by changing her last name to her Irish mother’s maiden name of Hayworth, dying her dark hair red and having electrolysis to raise her hairline.

Exclusive: Lee Daniels and his Lee Daniels Entertainment have teamed with Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman’s Playtone to develop a miniseries about dancer-singer-actor-musician Sammy Davis Jr., I have learned.

The project, titled Sammy, is still in preliminary stages, but I hear the producers are circling the 2003 book In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr. by Wil Haygood as source material.

For Lee, bringing Davis’ story to the screen has been a longtime passion; in 2013 there were reports about him eyeing a movie about the former Rat Pack-er that was in the works at HBO.

Meanwhile, Playtone brings in a strong track record with a slew of Emmy-winning miniseries including Band Of Brothers, The Pacific, John Adams and Olive Kitteridge.

There have been multiple attempts at a Sammy Davis, Jr. biopic, most recently a project set at Paramount Pictures last year with producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Lionel Richie...

It’s cold-blooded murder, I tell ya! Feisty Ruth Gordon goes undercover to find the evidence of homicide at Geraldine Page’s desert home, where companion-housekeepers keep disappearing. Robert Aldrich produced this marvelous, E-Ticket battle between celebrated actresses, and the result is a creative new solution for retirement finance problems!

What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1969 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 101 min. / Street Date January 8, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Geraldine Page, Ruth Gordon, Rosemary Forsyth, Robert Fuller, Mildred Dunnock, Joan Huntington, Peter Brandon, Michael Barbera, Peter Bonerz, Richard Angarola, Claire Kelly, Valerie Allen, Martin Garralaga.

Cinematography: Joseph Biroc

Film Editors: Frank J. Urioste, Michael Luciano

Original Music: Gerald Fried

Written by Theodore Apstein from a novel by Ursula Curtiss

Produced by Robert Aldrich

Directed by Lee H. Katzin (and Bernard Girard)

Few fans of Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen realize that he used the windfall profits...

Billy Wilder once observed that the best way to cast a gangster movie was to tour executive offices at the studios. That may be one reason he avoided the genre. Despite Wilder’s apprehensions, the two most anticipated 2019 releases — from Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, no less — harken back to that revered genre. As such, they may revive the question: Why did Hollywood all but abandon their mobsters?

Ironically, two newly published books that have nothing to do with the Scorsese and Tarantino movies remind us of the reasons: Gangster movies, it seems, began to hit too close to home. New nonfiction biographies of Johnny Rosselli and W.R. (Billy) Wilkerson provide vivid details of the scandalously close ties between the studio chiefs and organized crime from the 1930s through 1950s, and later. As such, they serve as intriguing context for the new entries.

Scorsese’s $200 million The Irishman, starring...

The Best of The Three Stooges

DVD

Time-Life

1934 – 1959 / 1.33:1 / Over 45 Hours (!)/ Street Date – June 6, 2018

Starring Moe Howard, Curly Howard, Larry Fine, Joe DeRita

Cinematography by Benjamin Kline, Gert Andersen, Ray Cory

Directed by Jules White

Garden variety slapstick has always been fraught with physical peril but The Three Stooges took the concept to medieval levels, their persona defined by equal parts vaudeville and the Spanish Inquisition.

With clothes seemingly hijacked from clotheslines and manners borrowed from feral raccoons, the scrappy trio were nothing if not street survivors – always on the dole or making do with hardscrabble day jobs. Their raw brand of comedy, all simmering anger and violent outbursts, was the embodiment of depression-era resentment.

Ticket buyers loved them, so much so that Columbia president Harry Cohn used them as a bargaining chip when striking deals with hungry theater owners – if exhibitors wanted The Three Stooges, they were stuck with Blondie Plays Cupid.

These wartime docu-propaganda films are fascinating, but critic Joseph McBride’s critical accompaniment is even better, nailing the meaning of five groundbreaking works of ‘indoctrination’ and giving us a refreshing revisionist take on one of America’s more revered film directors.

Mr. Capra Goes to War: Frank Capra’s World War II Documentaries

Blu-ray

Prelude to War, The Battle of Russia (1&2), The Negro Soldier, Tunisian Victory, Your Job in Germany

Olive Films

1942-1945 / B&W / 2:35 1:85 widescreen / 1:37 flat Academy / 310 min. / Street Date November 6, 2018 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.98

Starring: Walter Huston (frequent Narrator).

Introduction and lecture: Joseph McBride

Executive-produced by Frank Capra

I just realized that this is a big year for the film scholar, biographer and critic Joseph McBride. Not only has he an important new book on the shelves, he plays a significant role in front of and behind the scenes in the finally-finished Orson Welles...

The rough, sometimes druggy genesis of the American independent movie business of the ‘60s and ‘70s was recalled by Micky Dolenz and Michael Nesmith of the Monkees during a sold-out 50th anniversary American Cinematheque screening of the band’s ill-fated feature film “Head.”

Looking out into the Egyptian Theatre before the film unspooled, Dolenz drolly asked one audience member, “You’ve seen it? Can you tell me what it’s about?”

The evening was hosted by the Monkees’ Boswell, producer Andrew Sandoval, who asked for a show of hands of how many in the crowd were returning “Head” cultists and how many were seeing it for the first time. The 60 percent or so making return trips were hugely enthusiastic, but Sandoval wasn’t making any promises to the 40 percent newbies, warning dryly, “We’ll see how many of you are here when we’re done.”

Relentlessly post-modern and lacking anything...

Long before Jennifer Lopez and Eva Longoria, there was Rita Hayworth. The dancer-actress, born Margarita Carmen Cansino, would have been 100 on Wednesday, and even fans of classic Hollywood may not realize how extraordinary her career was. She was the No. 1 box office star of Columbia Pictures in the 1940s, she was Fred Astaire’s favorite dancing partner, and U.S. G.I.s had pinups of her around the globe during WWII. These are especially impressive in an era when Latino-Hispanic children were still in segregated schools and only a decade after America’s “repatriation” program shipped 2 million Mexicans across the border, claiming they were “stealing” American jobs.

Work dried up for Hayworth in the 1960s, due to occasional slurred speech and memory problems. Hollywood assumed she was alcoholic, but in 1980 she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, bringing worldwide awareness to the little-known disease. Her greatest legacy may be the annual Rita Hayworth Galas,...