Category Archives: Mini-Portraits
Bette and Joan, The Way It Should Have Been
The first pic is a publicity shot, for What Ever Happened to Baby Jane. But the second one, it just kills you, doesn’t it? This is the way it should have been, always, with Bette and Joan: Smart, tough, gorgeous, crazy-talented comrades in arms against the big bosses in Hollywood, who nickel-and-dimed them while they brought in millions …
Thomas Gomez: The Soul Behind the Villain
You’ve seen him a hundred times. Maybe not in the center of the screen, but you always know he’s there. The shambling menace, just off to the side. Maybe he’s got a score to settle. Or a hurt that won’t heal. Or maybe he’s handed his fate and what’s left of his conscience over to …
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 …
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, …
TCM Classic Film Festival Flashback: Mad for Maureen O’Hara
The five words that got the most thunderous ovation at the 2014 TCM Classic Film Festival: “Ladies and gentlemen, Maureen O’Hara!” On the surface, at least, the woman at the center of all the fuss was having none of it. As the applause in the El Capitan Theater melded with whistles, hoots and cheers, the 93-year-old …
Sister Celluloid 
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