Aug 28, 2026

In this 1935 20th Century-Fox Studios Year by Year episode, Friend of the Pod William Wyler, in his only appearance at Fox during the studio era, hits it out of the park again with The Gay Deception. This is one of two comedy masterpieces by Wyler in 1935, both woefully neglected, although this one foreshadows his one...

Aug 21, 2026

For this Special Subject episode, we looked at a couple of interventions in European national cinemas by Max Ophüls, La signora di tutti (1934), made in Italy, and Komedie om geld (1936), made in the Netherlands. Although not generally associated with radical politics, or politics at all, in these two early,...

Aug 14, 2026

For our inaugural Sandra Dee Acteurist Spotlight we examined two pairings with John Saxon from 1958, The Reluctant Debutante (directed by Vincente Minnelli), with Rex Harrison and Kay Kendall displaying their talents for farce, and The Restless Years (directed by Helmut Käutner), in which Dee gets to display her...

Aug 7, 2026

For this Warner Bros. 1935 episode we watched a couple of melodramas that show a side of the studio's 1930s output less familiar than its fast-talking gangster and proletarian dramas: The Right to Live (directed by William Keighley), a love triangle story set among the rich and ableist, starring Josephine Hutchinson...