Author Archive: sistercelluloid
Gail Russell: Sleep Peacefully, Angel
Thinking of Gail Russell today, on what would have been her 90th birthday. She had only 36 of them. If Marilyn Monroe was a candle in the wind, Gail Russell was a matchstick in a hailstorm. That she became an actress at all was due to a twist of fate usually found only in bad …
Happy Birthday, Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacall left us last month, just shy of her 90th birthday. She lost Bogie in 1957, and he waited another 57 years to be reunited with the love of his life. Here, Betty makes use of the gold-whistle charm her husband gave her, which paraphrases the famous line in the film on which …
THE ROAD BACK Hits a Nazi Detour
During one of the most shameful periods in Hollywood history, what could have been James Whale’s finest hour instead became his downfall. As 1937 dawned, the director was huddled with writers R.C. Sherriff and Charles Kenyon in a back office at Universal, working on a film adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, The Road Back. A sequel to …
Charles Boyer: A Birthday Celebration
Happy Birthday, Charles Boyer! I love you beyond all reason and sanity. This photo, taken during one of his many shifts at the Hollywood Canteen, really seems to capture him: warm, real, and totally un-movie-star-ish. Absent are the silly studio-mandated shoe lifts and toupee, which he never wore off camera—and you can see how hideously disappointed Claudette …
The Day Van Johnson Sent My Aunt Ruth to the Fainting Couch
Happy Birthday to the fabulous and insanely underrated Van Johnson, the light, romantic leading man with hidden depths. Though actually they weren’t hidden at all—they were pretty much right there, even in his breezier roles, but especially in weightier films such as Battleground, The End of the Affair, Miracle in the Rain and A Guy Named Joe. If you’re not familiar with that Van, …
NOIR CITY ANNUAL 2013: Grab One Now Before They’re Gone!
I’m a noir girl, so when I fall, I fall hard. Luckily, the objects of my affection never end up crumpled in a heap on the bedroom floor. Well, almost never. By the time I got through with Noir City Annual 2013, its pages were pawed, its corners were dog-eared (sometimes in both directions), and …
TORCH SONG: Joan Crawford in Blackface—And That’s Not All!
Early on in Torch Song, the 1953 MGM “musical” starring Joan Crawford as an uber-diva, she’s kvetching to her producer (James Todd): Crawford: “The script needs jokes, the music needs cutting and the staging—aaugh, it stinks!” Todd: “You don’t think it’s going to be a flop?” Crawford: “No show Jenny Stewart’s in is going to …
With Sorcerer Safely on Blu-ray, Friedkin Sets His Sights on To Live and Die in L.A.
On June 2, director William Friedkin live-Skyped with a packed house at the Film Forum in New York for a screening of his brilliant film, Sorcerer, which is finally getting the attention it has been denied for almost four decades. “This is the best-looking print of this I’ve ever seen,” he told the crowd. “I’m …
How Alice Adams Rescued Katharine Hepburn
On the surface, Katharine Hepburn seems to have little in common with the working-class heroine of Alice Adams, a fumbling, insecure Midwestern girl longing to rise above her roots and rejected at almost every turn. But at the time she took the role, Hepburn could empathize with Alice much more deeply than she may have wished. …
Sister Celluloid 
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