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Noir Nook: Ripped From the Headlines – Try and Get Me (1950) Try and Get Me (The Sound of Fury) (1950) This is an unpleasant post about an unpleasant movie based on an unpleasant, real-life incident. With luck, this post will be the worst thing about the new year. It’s uphill from here, read more

“How Sweet It Is: The Jackie Gleason Story”We have FOUR Books to Give Away this month! “How Sweet It Is adds new luster, dimension anddepth to an American original”– Paul Newman It’s time for our next book giveaway contest! CMH will be giving away FOUR COPIES of How read more

Western RoundUp: Western Film Book Library – Part 4 I hope the new year is starting well for everyone! With many of us across the country — indeed, the world! — still spending most of our time at home, this seemed like a good month to share some additional classic film book recomme read more

Casablanca and the Battle over “As Time Goes By”(Exclusive by Author Steven C. Smith) By mid-1941, Max Steiner had already scored over thirty films at Warner Bros. since becoming that studio’s highest paid staff composer in 1937. Many of his projects had been prestigious and highly profitable. read more

Silents are Golden: A Closer Look at – Way Down East (1920) One of the most influential early directors of all time was D.W. Griffith, who rose to acclaim for the excellent short dramas he directed for Biograph and went on to create some of the biggest features of the 1910s. Controversial today read more

How many Films did Maureen O’Hara andJohn Wayne Star in Together? John Wayne and the lovely Maureen O’Hara “There’s only one woman who has been my friend over the years andby that I mean a real friend, like a man would be. That woman is Maureen O’Hara.” -John Wayne, read more

Silver Screen Standards: Tallulah Bankhead Early in her life, Tallulah’s beauty won her the chance at stardom, but her indomitable personality made her a legend. Tallulah’s mother, who died a few weeks after giving birth, is buried at Maple Hill Cemetery in Huntsville, Alabama. A local perform read more

In my opinion, the most extraordinary documentary series in the history of the medium is the late director Michael Apted’s “Up” films. Beginning in 1964 with “Seven Up,” a group of 14 British children from various socio-economic backgrounds were interviewed about their lives, hopes, and dreams read more

To start this new year of Monsters and Matinees let’s take a deep breath, exhale all the anxiety from 2020 and laugh. Yes, even here in the world of Monsters and Matinees, we need to laugh and remember that horror and comedy are two sides of the same coin. So this column is dedicated to the monst read more

Classic Movie Travels: Doug McPhail Betty Jaymes and Doug McPhail in Babes in Arms (1939) While Doug McPhail’s name may not be well remembered today, his brief time in the film industry is to be appreciated. Typically appearing in lighthearted musical fare with his booming, melodious voice, read more

Our January Picks on the Classic Movie Hub ChannelJanuary Birthdays and Chasing Away the Winter Blues! It’s that time again… We have our monthly free streaming picks for our Classic Movie Hub Channel at Best Classics Ever (BCE) – the mega streaming channel for read more

“Made in Hollywood”We have FOUR Books to Give Away this month! “Only Jim Bacon could top himself with Made in Hollywood.I thought Hollywood is a Four Letter Town was hilarious until I read this”–Bob Hope It’s time for our next book giveaway contest! CMH will be giving away FOUR COPIES read more

Max Steiner, Fred Astaire, and the RKO Movie Musical(Exclusive by Author Steven C. Smith) In 1933 — the same year he recorded his landmark score for King Kong —Max Steiner achieved another ambition he’d sought since becoming RKO’s musical director: oversight of a sophisticated, successful read more

Can’t Help Singing: A Western Musical! Last December I ended the year here writing on a dark topic, “Noir-Tinged Westerns,” so I thought this December I’d write about something completely different, a color Western musical! That musical is Can’t Help Singing, a 1944 read more

Silents are Golden: Silent Superstars – The One and Only Douglas Fairbanks With his endless energy, impressive athletic skills, muscular physique, and winning smile, Douglas Fairbanks was the all-American role model that the early 20th century needed. His films were good, clean, old-fashioned read more

A Visit to the Lucy-Desi Museum and moreSpecial Guest Post by Lucy fan, Lucy Ortiz When I was born, my parents decided to name me after the I Love Lucy show. As an adult, I realized I had some things in common with the Arnaz-Ball family. My birthday is exactly one week before Desi Jr’s in J read more

My Christmas Eve Programming I’m going to pretend that I’m a programmer for a Classic TV station (you know like Antenna, Me-TV and Decades) and I’ve been given the awesome assignment of planning the Christmas Eve schedule. Let’s say Christmas Eve programming starts at about 6 PM and goes read more

“Have a Festival of Horror” proclaims the full-page magazine ad from 1973. It was in the quarterly magazine called The Film Journal and it literally meant to have a film festival, as in  “hey, buy these movies on 16mm film.” The company – Universal 16 – offered five festivals including read more

Noir Nook: Five Things I Love About Martha Ivers When you think about femme fatales in film noir, who are the first dames to come to mind? Phyllis Dietrichson from Double Indemnity, certainly, and Kathie Moffat from Out of the Past? Cora Smith in The Postman Always Rings Twice? Kitty from The Kil read more

Silver Screen Standards: White Christmas (1954) I’m not really a Christmas person. My overwhelming mood through the holiday season tends to be a combination of anxiety and depression that only lifts when we reach December 26, at which point I heave a sigh of relief. My father’s favorite Christmas read more