Carole Lombard: The Divine Screwball

A genre and a star is born
With the exception of perhaps Cary Grant, no movie star has been more identified with screwball comedy than Carole Lombard. In fact, if it weren’t for Lombard, the genre might not have received its name. “Miss Lombard has played screwball dames before…she needs only a resin bag to be a female Rube Waddell.” So said Variety in 1936, comparing Lombard’s performance, as Irene Bullock in My Man Godfrey, to the nineteenth-century baseball legend known for his screwball pitches.
 
Risk taker
From her breakthrough role in Twentieth Century (1934) opposite John Barrymore, it was apparent that a comic genius was born. Lombard could have become a typical Hollywood leading lady on her movie star looks alone, but instead she jumped head-first into screwball comedies, taking on roles that often downplayed her natural beauty. She took comedic risks that few women in Hollywood were willing to take and it paid off big time. The public loved Lombard, and they loved her screwball heroines.

At the top of her game
By the mid-1930s, Lombard was one of the top box office draws, besting Janet Gaynor, Bette Davis, Jean Harlow, and Katherine Hepburn. She was also on a winning streak with films like Hands Across the Table, Love Before Breakfast, The Princess Comes Across, My Man Godfrey, and Nothing Sacred.

Enduring popularity
Lombard tried her hand at drama with some success, but the public loved her screwball persona best and it’s the comedies that have endured. Even by today’s standards, Lombard’s performances seem strikingly fresh and contemporary.  If it wasn't for her untimely death in 1942, who knows what heights she could have reached. Even so, few have risen so high.

Turner Classic Movies to air four films starring Jennifer Jones in January

Turner Classic Movies (TCM) will honor the career of Jennifer Jones by airing four of her films January 7, 2010. They are

Duel in the Sun costarring Joseph Cotten and Gregory Peck
Beat the Devil costarring Humphrey Bogart
Madame Bovary costarring James Mason, Van Heflin, and Louis Jordan
Indiscretion of an American Wife costarring Montgomery Clift

Check listings in your area for show times.

Screen legend Jennifer Jones dead at 90

Academy Award winning actress, Jennifer Jones died Thursday December 17. Jones was one of the biggest stars of the 1940s and 1950s; she received a total of five Academy Award nominations, winning the award with her first starring performance in The Song of Bernadette (1943).

A star is born
Jones met her first husband, Robert Walker, while both were studying acting in New York. As a young married couple, they decided to give Hollywood a try and headed west. Jones's career took off faster than Walker's. She caught the eye of producer David O. Selznik, who carefully managed her career. After divorcing Walker, Selznik and Jones were married in 1949. Their marriage lasted until Selznik's death in 1965.

Portrait of an actress
As a movie star, Jones seemed to specialize in complicated melodrama's or over-the-top epics like Duel in the Sun (1946). Although Duel in the Sun was generally panned by critics, the public loved it and it was one of the top grossing films of all time. When given the proper vehicle, Jones proved she was a capable and competent actress with winning performances in Love Letters (1945), Portrait of Jenny (1948), and probably her most underrated, but truly brilliant performance in Cluny Brown (1946), directed by the great Ernst Lubitsch.

Enduring popularity
In the 1950s, Jones's popularity was still solid, with lead roles in films like Carrie (1952), costarring Laurence Olivier, Ruby Gentry (1952), with a young Charlton Heston, and probably her most memorable role from this period, Love is a Many Splendid Thing (1955) opposite William Holden, for which she received her fifth and final Academy Award nomination. Her last major film role was in the disaster epic, The Towering Inferno (1974), which featured an all-star cast that included Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, William Holden, and Fred Astaire.

A very private life
In contrast to her career as a world-famous movie star, Jones was a very private person who avoided the limelight. Fortunately, she's left us a wonderful body of work that will live on for many years to come.

"To Catch a Thief" is the next "Meet Me at the Movies" event

The Prairie District Neighborhood Alliance (PDNA) invites you to "Meet Me at the Movies," Friday January 29, 2009 at 6:30 p.m. at Sherwood Community Music School at Columbia College recital hall, 1312 S. Michigan Ave.

Alfred Hitchcock, Cary Grant, and Grace Kelly too!
To Catch a Thief  filmed on location on the French Riviera, is a picture-postcard treat of a movie. The Alfred Hitchcock classic pairs Cary Grant as a reformed jewel thief, John "The Cat" Robie and Grace Kelly as Francie Stevens, a vacationing American heiress.

When a series of jewel robberies occur, all similar in style to the methods of the so-called reformed Mr. Robie, the Riviera is abuzz with detectives, insurance investigators, and the international press. All of this intrigue and excitement is fascinating to Francie who thinks Robie is up to his old tricks again. Rather than finding his behavior repulsive, Francie instead is attracted to the enigmatic and sophisticated Mr. Robie.

Academy Award Winner

Filled with all the things you've come to expect from Hitchcock--elegant surroundings, witty, sophisticated dialogue, and glamorous costumes--To Catch a Thief doesn't disappoint. Nominated for three Academy Awards (winning for Best Color Cinematography), this 1955 suspense classic is one fun ride.

A reluctant leading man
After completing the film Dream Wife, costarring Deborah Kerr, in 1953, Grant announced his retirement from films. The story goes that Grant thought that he was getting too old to play romantic leads. Additionally, he found himself competing with method actors like Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift; Grant thought his style of acting was on its way out. Fortunately, Hitchcock convinced Grant that To Catch a Thief was the perfect role for a "comeback," plus there was the added bonus of costarring with Grace Kelly, a young actress Grant liked and admired.

Woman chases man
Even though Grant continued starring in films until 1966, his screen persona changed slightly. Instead of being the aggressive leading man, pursuing beautiful women, beginning with To Catch a Thief, it was younger women who were constantly chasing the older Grant, a plot device he found much more believable.

Preston Sturges: Master of the Cockeyed Caravan, Part 3

A writer-director is born
As the story goes, Sturges sold the screenplay for The Great McGinty to Paramount for $10, under the condition that he would also be allowed to direct. Since this seemed like a fairly reasonable risk for the studio, they acquiesced.

The Great McGinty (1940) didn't have big stars to pack the movie palaces, but it did have good reviews from some of the top critics of the day. New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther said this: "In the trade they call them 'sleepers'—these pictures which come drifting in without benefit of much advance publicity and which turn out delightful surprises." And a delightful surprise it was, and with its success, Sturges was on his way to the big leagues. At the 1941 Academy Awards, Sturges took home the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

Without taking a breath, it seems, Paramount released another film in 1940 written and directed by Sturges,  Christmas in July. Again, the film had no big stars, and again, Crowther called the film "another of those one-man creations by Preston Sturges for Paramount, is just about as cunning and carefree a comedy as any one could possibly preordain . . . ." Crowther ended his review by saying,  "As a creator of rich and human comedy Mr. Sturges is closing fast on the heels of Frank Capra."

The lady is a champ
It wasn't too long for the folks at Paramount to realize that Sturges as a writer-director was turning into a goldmine. Armed with a big budget and top-flight movie stars, Sturges jumped into production of The Lady Eve (1941). With Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda and turning in brilliant performances under his direction, Sturges was at his peak. At the end of 1941, The New York Times named The Lady Eve the best picture of the year, beating Citizen Kane!

Veronica Lake is on the Take
More hits followed in the financial success of The Lady Eve: Sullivan's Travels (1942), The Palm Beach Story (1942), The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944) , and Hail the Conquering Hero (1944). In a span of roughly four years, Sturges wrote and directed seven classic films! If you count The Great Moment (1944), a film that Sturges fan Crowther praised, you can make it an even eight classics in four years. It appeared that Sturges could do nothing wrong.

The shooting star crashes to earth
Almost overnight it seemed, things started going south for Sturges. At the height of his fame, he left Paramount and formed California Pictures Corporation with Howard Hughes. Nothing much came from this venture and eventually Hughes shut things down, bought RKO, and left Sturges without a home studio or any projects on the horizon.

Phoenix rising at Fox?
It would be four years before Sturges would release another film. Darryl Zanuck, at Twentieth Century Fox, hired Sturges to write and direct Unfaithfully Yours (1948) starring Rex Harrison and Linda Darnell. The film, although popular in the eyes of some critics (yes, Crowther was still a fan), didn't fare as well with the public at large. The humor, gags, and amazingly complicated narrative were all there, but as Crowther noted, "... a shade of something fatal to a champion may be perceived in his new picture at the Roxy. That's a slip in his timing and his speed. Like a boxer who takes too long a lay-off, Mr. Sturges has slowed up a bit. And this is something which his public will be the first to note and deplore." And the public did take notice and Unfaithfully Yours didn't turn out to be the next great Sturges hit. Sturges had one more chance at Fox with The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend (1949) starring Betty Grable. But by then, the magic had completely rubbed off. The film was a disaster for Sturges and the studio. Sturges fan and supporter, Crowther ended his review of the film with this zinger: "Put out in Technicolor, The Beautiful Blonde looks good. But, to paraphrase the theme song, it looks pretty well shot in the end."

A lasting legacy
Although Sturges's film career basically ended with The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend, his legacy lives on in the ground-breaking comedies he wrote and directed at Paramount. The body of work he produced in those four short years is a feat that has yet to be matched.

Preston Sturges was a man of uncommon intelligence and one of the most talented writer-directors to come out of Hollywood. He paved the for other writer-directors like Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Billy Wilder, and most importantly, he left us his wonderful films that still amaze, surprise, and delight us to this day.

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Wendy Calio imagination movers

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Wendy Calio

Wendy Calio

Preston Sturges: Master of the Cockeyed Caravan, Part 2

Going Hollywood
In 1932, Sturges went to Hollywood and signed on with Universal as a writer. From the get-go, his writing wasn’t a hit with the studio bosses and his scripts were rejected. On his own, Sturges wrote a screenplay called The Power and the Glory, which he sold to the Fox studios for a fee and a percentage of the gross. During his time as a freelancer, he also wrote the screenplay for The Great McGinty, but no one was interested. It was during this freelance period that Sturges decided he wanted to be a director. Again, no one was interested in his services.

Studio musical chairs
After more writing positions at several other Hollywood studios, including MGM and Columbia, Sturges found himself back on the Universal lot. Assigned to write the screenplay for the Claudette Colbert vehicle, Imitaion of Life. With the success of this film, Sturges was on his way to a successful career as a screenwriter where he found he was in demand by the likes of Sam Goldwyn and Paramount studios. It was at Paramount that he would have his most enduring success.

A Paramount experience
At Paramount, Sturges wrote the screenplay for Remember the Night starring Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck. In spite of the fact that Sturges didn’t like the script changes made by director Mitchell Leisen, the film was an enourmous success. With his stock rising, Sturges was able to finally sell The Great McGinty script for $10, with the understanding that he would not only be the film’s writer, but its director as well. Film history was about to be made.

Natasha Perera - Real Sri Lankan Beauty

Preston Sturges: Master of the Cockeyed Caravan, Part 1

Edmund Preston Biden Sturges was one of the most influential motion picture directors of the twentieth century. As a writer-director, Sturges produced seven films in three years. Of those seven films, six were box office and critical successes. Today those six films are considered unqualified classics.

A genius is born
Sturges was born at the turn of the twentieth century (1898) in Chicago to Mary Estelle Dempsey and Edmund C. Biden. The marriage was not a success with Mary divorcing Biden in 1901. That same year, she married Solomon Sturges, a man from a prominent Chicago family. Solomon adopted  Mary’s son, who was then known as Preston Sturges.

After first getting some schooling in Chicago, Sturges’s mother decided to divorce Solomon and move to Europe, enrolling young Preston in boarding schools in France and Switzerland. Like a screwball character from one of his future movies, Sturges’s mother led an eccentric life. As the best friend of modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan, Mary Estelle went to concerts, plays, and museums, often with young Preston in tow.  When Sturges was 15 years old, he worked backstage for Duncan during her New York performance of Oedipus Rex.

Flying solo
When World War I broke out, Sturges volunteered. He trained as a pilot and although he didn’t fly during the war, he earned his wings and was commissioned Second Lieutenant of the Aviation Section of the Signal Officers Reserve Corps of the Army of the United States.

After trying his hand at song writing and other various pursuits, Sturges wrote and produced a play called The Guinea Pig. It received respectable reviews, although it ran for only 57 performances. His next play, Strictly Dishonorable, was a critical and financial success. Unfortunately, his next few plays were flops of fantastic proportions, so the career in the theater wasn’t destined to be a long one.

Sri Lanka actress Maheshika Photo Gallery

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