Here are 10 things you should know about Clarence Kolb, born 147 years ago today. After a lengthy career in vaudeville and on the stage, he became an in-demand character actor in pictures.
Tag: classic Hollywood
10 Things You Should Know About Alan Curtis
Here are 10 things you should know about Alan Curtis, born 112 years ago today. He appeared in 56 pictures before his life and career were cut short.
Remembering Barbara Stanwyck and Ginger Rogers on Their Birthday
For old movie buffs, July 16 is a very special day indeed. A pair of memorable stars were born on this day, and so special were they, we couldn’t choose one over the other in deciding which to pay tribute to. So today you get a double dip.
Happy birthday to the great Barbara Stanwyck, born 114 years ago today, and to the marvelous Ginger Rogers, just four years her junior. They don’t make ’em like these two wonderful gals anymore!
Remembering Harold Arlen
The great songsmith Harold Arlen was born 116 years ago today in Buffalo, New York. His father was a Jewish cantor.
In the late 1920s and early ’30s, Arlen as a band vocalist with Red Nichols, Joe Venuti and Leo Reisman, among others.
Arlen wrote for motion pictures, Broadway musicals and Cotton Club reviews, working with such esteemed lyricists as Ted Koehler, E. Y. “Yip” Harburg, Ira Gershwin, and Johnny Mercer.
We’re featuring recordings of Arlen’s compositions all day today on Cladrite Radio. Why not tune in now?
Remember to Watch ‘Remember the Night’
If you think you’ve seen every classic Christmas picture (and most of them one too many times, at that), you’ll be pleasantly surprised, we hope, to learn of one that’s flown under the radar of many a classic movie buff.
Remember the Night (1940) was the last movie Preston Sturges wrote before moving into the director’s chair with The Great McGinty (1940). Mitchell Leisen directs here, and though Sturges was said to have been disappointed with Leisen’s efforts, it’s hard to imagine why. It’s a terrific picture, one that should be every bit the holiday favorite that pictures such as It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, The Shop Around the Corner, and others have become.
Remember the Night features Fred MacMurray as an ambitious assistant D.A. in NYC who finds himself with shoplifter Barbara Stanwyck on his hands because he has asked for a delay in her trial, so as to avoid the jury feeling any holiday-inspired sympathy for her.
It soon comes out that both the D.A. and the dame are Hoosiers, so she accompanies him on a road trip to visit their respective families. Stanwyck’s brief visit with her mother doesn’t go so well, though, so she sticks with MacMurray, whereupon romance and laughs ensue.
Remember the Night is plenty sentimental enough to qualify as a holiday classic, but like It’s a Wonderful Life, it’s got a dark side, too, delivered with gimlet-eyed bite. Apart from a brief appearance by regrettably stereotypical Black valet character, played by Fred Toones, who does his best with what he’s given, it’s well night perfect.
This post was first published in slightly different form on December 6, 2013.