Jul 30, 2021
This week on the pod, we get started with our new Acteurist Oeuvre-View series: Margaret Sullavan. We were expecting solid entries from the selective Sullavan, but weren't fully prepared for John Stahl to match his Back Street achievement with Sullavan's screen debut, Only Yesterday (1933). We discuss its relationship...
Jul 23, 2021
RKO, 1936: Anne Shirley and Katharine Hepburn have father trouble. In Make Way for a Lady (directed by David Burton), Shirley gets hysterical at the thought of indulgent 20th century dad Herbert Marshall developing a sex life; while in A Woman Rebels (directed by Mark Sandrich), Hepburn blames stern Victorian dad Donald...
Jul 16, 2021
Dave's first Summer in France Special Subject is devoted to two lesser-known Max Ophüls movies starring Edwige Feuillère that were made just before the Nazis occupied France and Ophüls fled to Hollywood, Sans lendemain (1939) and De Mayerling à Sarajevo (1940). We consider the two films in light of those dire...
Jul 9, 2021
Clara Bow gets a wonderful finale to her (unfortunately foreshortened) career in our final Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode devoted to her. Fox comes through with two excellent vehicles: Call Her Savage (1932), directed by John Francis Dillon and brilliantly shot by Lee Garmes, a delightfully lurid Pre-Code that...
Jul 2, 2021
Our studio this week is 20th Century Fox, the year is 1936; two fascinating movies of dubious historicity (in the details, at least) by the ever-reliable Henry King, possibly Fox's most characteristic director. First up, Ramona, a sympathetic depiction of North American settler colonialism from the perspective of Native...