Category Archives: bloggy stuff

July’s “coming attractions” at True Classics.

Posted on by under announcements, bloggy stuff

Another month has come and gone–a good month, all things considered (despite the drama that went down in the middle of June concerning a self-important, unnamed movie blog organization … bygones). And we have even more good stuff on tap for July!

First, if you visit the site regularly, you may have noticed a change in address. We decided it was about time put on our “big girl” blogging pants and purchase our own domain. So now you can find us at trueclassics.net! If you also follow us on an RSS feed, you may need to change your settings to reflect the new address so the posts will continue to be delivered to you.

This month’s theme is a (terrible) play on words. Throughout July (in addition to our regular features), we will be celebrating our independents. No, I didn’t spell that wrong: we are going to be writing about “independents,” those stars and filmmakers who chose to challenge or break the Hollywood mold in ways that reverberated throughout the movie industry for years to come–the rebels with a cause, if you will. And who better to serve as this month’s “mascot” than the woman whose landmark lawsuit against Warner Bros. guaranteed more creative control and freedom to performers, Ms. Olivia de Havilland, who is also celebrating her 96th birthday today. [Our banner image this month, incidentally, is a still from 1946's The Dark Mirror, in which de Havilland plays identical twins. It was one of the first movies the actress made after winning her lawsuit against the studio.]

During the second week of this month, Carrie, Sarah, and I will be posting pieces for the Best Hitchcock Movies (That Hitchcock Never Made) blogathon … which, around these parts, we have been referring to as the “Not-Hitch” Blogathon because, well, we’re lazy like that. As we’ve mentioned before, this blogathon, hosted by longtime TC friends Dorian (Tales of the Easily Distracted) and Becky (ClassicBecky’s Brain Food), celebrates the Hitchcockian flair of films that were not helmed by the “Master of Suspense” himself, but show definite influences of his inimitable style. There is a long list of contributors (with some very familiar names) already signed up to participate, so make sure to check the list daily as posts start going live next week. As for us, Sarah’s up first with Gaslight (1944) on Monday; I’ll follow with Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) on Tuesday; and Carrie will put Mel Brooks on the Therapy Thursdays couch with High Anxiety (1977) two days later.

A number of other blogathons are on tap for the upcoming months. In addition to the CMBA Gene Kelly tribute next month, we have also signed on to contribute a piece to Angela’s Paramount Centennial Blogathon at The Hollywood Revue, which kicks off in September. This event will celebrate the 100th anniversary of Paramount, which the studio has been celebrating this year, and quite a few folks–including a number of classic movie bloggers–have signed up to participate. There has been a bit of an outcry among some film fans that the Paramount celebration has largely leaned toward recognizing more recent films from the studio’s storied past, so it will be nice to see some attention paid to some of the lesser-known (i.e. older) films produced by Paramount as well.

Several other blogathons have been announced which, due to time constraints, we will not be participating in, but are worth mentioning here: Rianna of Frankly, My Dear and In the Mood’s Natalie are co-hosting The Great Recasting Blogathon this month–you can find information about it here; Kristen of Journeys in Classic Film is hosting the Universal Backlot Blogathon in September–you can find information about that one here; and information about Monty’s ongoing Cinematic World Tour at All Good Things can be found here.

Finally, last month I was selected (along with Lara of the great blog Backlots) to serve on the CMBA Board of Governors for the next three years. I’m very glad to serve alongside fellow governors (and fantastic bloggers) Jessica of Comet Over Hollywood, Becky of the aforementioned ClassicBecky’s Brain Food, and board chairman Rick, the head barista over at the Classic Film and TV Cafe. Here’s hoping the next few years see more growth and participation in our lovely community of classic film folks!

I like blogging in June; how ’bout you?

Posted on by under announcements, bloggy stuff, LAMB

[Bonus points for naming the song whose lyrics we borrowed for this post's title. :) ]

Well, another month has come and gone, and what a month it was! For instance:

  • Our “Movie Memories” series, which wrapped up yesterday, was so much fun to host! Over the course of the past thirty-one days, we posted memories from thirty-six people from all walks of life: fellow bloggers, dear friends, relatives, coworkers,  from age two to age eighty … all combined, equaling thirty-six wonderful, funny, touching, and entertaining memories. We are grateful to each one of you for sharing your cinematic memories with us, and we hope to do another event like this in the future so we can share even more great stories with all of you!
  • Brandie became a contributor to The Cinementals, and on Saturday, she will be kicking off a weekly series on the site to accompany True Classics’ ongoing ode to animation, Saturday Morning Cartoons. The new series over at The Cinementals will focus on animated shorts, highlighting one fantastic cartoon each week. Make sure to check it out!
  • And last but not least … we welcomed a new contributor, Sarah, to the True Classics crew! And Sarah is rarin’ to go–she is going to revive our long-dormant “Maudlin Mondays” series to focus on the romantic comedies and sentimental flicks she loves so very much. Look for her first MM post this Monday!

~*~

As we kick off a new month, there is a lot of fun stuff on tap that we hope you’ll enjoy, including our participation in three upcoming blogathons. On Sunday, Brandie will post her contribution to the Mary Pickford Blogathon hosted by KC of the Classic Movies blog. Later in the month, both Brandie and Sarah will write posts for the Queer Blogathon hosted by Garbo Laughs and Pussy Goes Grrr. And Brandie will wrap up the month with a piece for R.D. Finch’s William Wyler Blogathon over at The Movie Projector.

As of late, we’ve been experimenting with a monthly “theme” to tie the month together. April gave us a month of Barbara Stanwyck films, and last month was all about those memorable movie experiences. With the weather getting downright sweltering in our neck of the woods, we figured June would be a great time to highlight some of our favorite “Girls” of Summer. Throughout the month, we’re going to focus on films with “girl,” “lady,” or “woman” (or some such variation) in the title. Not only does this give Brandie an excuse to dust off the ol’ Feminist Fridays banner (like she needed one), but it means we’ll be watching–and posting about!–some truly fantastic films. There are so many to choose from that fit the category, after all!

Additionally, Carrie has decided that this summer is as good a time as any to tackle a topic she’s longed to write about since the early days of this blog: the filmography of the great Mel Brooks! She’ll be writing about High Anxiety (1977) in July for the “Best Hitchcock Films Hitchcock Never Made” blogathon hosted by Dorian and Becky, and over the next couple of months will focus on other films helmed by Brooks as well.

And of course, we’ll feature our regular film reviews and anything else that happens to tickle our fancy. It’s shaping up to be an exciting month, and we hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we plan to.

Here’s to a great summer of blogging!

Hey there, hi there, ho there, you’re as welcome as can be!

Posted on by under announcements, bloggy stuff, welcome!

I am beyond pleased to announce that we have a new member of the True Classics crew! Sarah is a dear friend and fellow classic film fanatic, and I am happy to welcome her aboard! You can find out more about her and her favorite films on her personal profile page. And look for her first post soon!

Welcome, Sarah! We’re glad you’re joining our crazy jamboree.

It’s going to be a blogathon bonanza!

Posted on by under blogathon, bloggy stuff

This summer is shaping up to be a great time for classic film bloggers to participate in some really interesting events. Over the next three months, a number of blogathons are scheduled on some wide-ranging topics, and we here at True Classics could not be any more excited to throw our collective hat into the ring!

First up is the annual For the Love of Film blogathon, hosted by film blogging rock stars Marilyn Ferdinand, Roderick Heath, and Farran Smith Nehme. In years past, the focus has been on film restoration; this year, the event will raise money to pay for temporary streaming of the 1924 Graham Cutts/Alfred Hitchcock collaboration The White Shadow on the National Film Preservation Foundation website as well as the costs of recording a new film score by Michael Mortilla. The topic is pretty wide open, as defined by the event’s Facebook page:

“Anything to do with Hitchcock, British silent films, silent film scores, film preservation and the people who do it (but please, as much as we love and revere him, no tributes to Martin Scorsese), the suspense genre, the stars of The White Shadow (to be found on IMDb), Graham Cutts, and other related esoterica.”

The For the Love of Film blogathon will accept posts throughout the week of May 13th through the 18th. The donation button is posted in the sidebar if you would like to give a little dough for this great cause!

The end of the month will bring all the pretty horses out to play, as My Love of Old Hollywood’s Page hosts her Horseathon. Running from May 25th through the 27th, bloggers will post about their favorite equine-related films of yesteryear. Carrie will be writing a post about The Last Unicorn (1982) for our Saturday Morning Cartoons series, and I will contribute a post on Cat Ballou (1965) and Lee Marvin’s infamous drunken horse.

Bringing up the rear as the Horseathon concludes (see what I did there? Hey, it IS Kentucky Derby day), fellow CMBA-er Monty of All Good Things is hosting a Cinematic World Tour. This will a summer-long event, kicking off May 28th and going on through September. For this blogathon, Monty invites you to create a fantasy summer tour of classic movie locales. You can post as many times as you like before Labor Day, so check out the details and climb aboard!

Kicking off the month of June, KC of Classic Movies will host a Mary Pickford Blogathon. The groundbreaking actress and film studio owner has been in the news quite a bit recently, so this is the perfect time for an event celebrating her life. The topic is open to anything in the realm of Pickford’s life and career and will run from the 1st through the 3rd.

Next up, starting on June 18th, is the second edition of what will hopefully become an annual event from here on out. Hold onto your hats, guys and gals, ’cause Garbo Laughs is bringing you the Queer Film Blogathon Part Deux: The Queerening (as Caroline so hilariously put it when announcing the return in April)! As with last year, the event is open to any and all film bloggers, classic or non, and the topic is wide-open, so long as your post “celebrat[es] lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, or otherwise non-heterosexual, non-gender-binary depictions or personages in film!” Last year I had so much fun contributing a post on the question of my beloved Cary Grant’s purported gayness and depictions of such in several of his classic comedic roles. I don’t know if I can top that this year, but I’m damn well going to try!

The following week, R.D. Finch is throwing a William Wyler blogathon over at The Movie Projector. Quite a few of our favorite classic film bloggers are participating in this one, so it is sure to produce some truly excellent reads. Yours truly will be contributing a piece on the 1941 Bette Davis vehicle The Little Foxes (1941)–it’s based on one of my favorite plays of all time, by Lillian Hellman, so this will definitely be an interesting one to tackle. Make sure to check out all of the great Wyler tributes from June 24th through the 29th.

Two great blogging friends, Dorian of Tales of the Easily Distracted and Becky of ClassicBecky’s Brain Food fame, had a spectacular idea for a blogathon focusing on the best Hitchcock films that Hitchcock never made: those movies that bear all of the hallmarks of the erstwhile Master of Suspense, but did not result from his delicious and sometimes diabolical direction. I’ll be writing about a great Barbara Stanwyck thriller, 1948′s Sorry, Wrong Number. It’s going to be a marvelous celebration, so make sure to sign up and join in the fun from July 7th through the 12th!

Last but certainly not least, the CMBA is hosting its second blogathon this year (after the immense success of January’s Comedy Classics event). This time around, we’re celebrating the centennial of the amazing Gene Kelly’s birth. We are contributing two posts for this one: Carrie is finally going to tackle the third of Gene’s musical collaborations with Frank Sinatra (after our brief mentions of 1945′s Anchors Aweigh and 1949′s On the Town), Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949), while I will be writing a piece on the 1950 Kelly-Judy Garland musical Summer Stock. (Note: this blogathon is limited to CMBA members only.)

EIGHT upcoming blogathons to participate in–to quote Katharine Hepburn as Jo March: “What richness!” Each and every one has its own special appeal. Are you signed up to contribute to any of these? If not, there’s still time to sign up, so check out the details and get to writin’! And if there are any others that we’ve neglected to list, let us know in the comments!

Addendum: Journeys in Classic Film is hosting a “Leading Man” tournament beginning on May 20th! Details will be coming soon, but in the meantime, you can find banners featuring a variety of classic leading men at the Journey blog.

A month of Stany goodness.

Posted on by under bloggy stuff

At last count (as in, I just counted five minutes ago), I have twenty-two unwatched films on the DVR, all of which I have recorded from TCM over the past two months. And though it wasn’t by design, I realized recently that five of these movies feature Barbara Stanwyck. To top that off, I also recently acquired three DVDs starring Stanwyck, all of which I have yet to view (and one of which has yet to be opened!).

I have a point in mentioning this, and it is this: I think April will be the month of Stanwyck on True Classics. After all, I’ve made no secret of my love for Babs in the past. In my mind, she is one of the greatest actresses to ever grace the screen–insanely beautiful, insanely talented, insanely witty. What better way to pay homage to one of my very favorite screen sirens than to dedicate an entire month’s worth of posts to her?

It feels doubly appropriate considering that a new biography of the actress, Barbara Stanwyck: The Miracle Woman, by Dan Callahan, was just published in February. So to accompany a month’s worth of film reviews, I’ll be snatching up a copy of Callahan’s book and reviewing it towards the end of the month.

But for now, just to kick things off, here’s a look back at some of the Stanwyck-centric reviews we’ve posted over the past two years …

My first post for True Classics, way back in December 2009, was a review of two Stanwyck Christmas classics, Remember the Night (1940) and Christmas in Connecticut (1945).

As part of a review of the Preston Sturges Filmmaker Collection on DVD, I provided a truncated look at Stanwyck’s brilliant performance in The Lady Eve (1941).

Here’s a quick review of Stanwyck’s hilarious turn as a slang-slingin’ burlesque doll in Ball of Fire (1941).

Stanwyck plays the target of Humphrey Bogart’s serial wife murderer in the somewhat strange 1947 film The Two Mrs. Carrolls.

For the CMBA “Movies of 1939″ blogathon last spring, I could not resist revisiting Golden Boy, the film that kicked off a lifelong friendship for costars Stanwyck and William Holden.

A guilty pleasure flick if there ever was one, 1943′s Lady of Burlesque again features Stanwyck as a burlesque queen, in one of the better B-flicks of the 1940s.

Stay tuned throughout the month as we post even more Stany goodness!

A few things of interest …

Posted on by under blogathon, bloggy stuff, contributed post


First of all, my contribution to “March-in-March,” the wonderful tribute to Fredric March hosted by Sittin’ on a Backyard Fence, has been posted! I’ve taken a look back at 1942′s I Married a Witch, in which March notoriously clashed–on screen and off–with temperamental costar Veronica Lake. Make sure to check out ALL of the great entries that have been posted at the Fence throughout the month!

Secondly, we want to extend our sincere thanks to all of our readers and subscribers for helping us reach an amazing milestone today–300,000 page views! This calls for a celebratory happy dance.


We are grateful to each and every one of you, and hope that we can continue to deserve your interest throughout the third year of our blogging existence.  :)

And finally, I know I said I would be posting entries in our ongoing “Women in Hollywood” series this month … well, March has gotten away from me (this is, unfortunately, nothing new), but I’ll have a couple of posts up later this week before the month winds down to a close. Look for the first one to go up either tomorrow or Thursday, and another on Saturday (as part of our “Pioneers in Animation” series!).

I’m all out of clever titles at the moment.

Posted on by under bloggy stuff

But while I find it difficult to think of a witty name for this post, I still have enough wits about me to thank the lovely Dorian from Tales of the Easily Distracted for tipping a nod in our direction for the “7×7″ meme floating around the blogosphere as of late. Thanks for thinking of us, Dorian!

Now, as Genie would say, when it comes to accepting this award, “There are a few, uh, provisos. Ah, a couple of quid pro quo.” I must:

  • Tell everyone something that no one else knows about.
  • Link to one of my posts that I personally think best fits the following categories: Most Beautiful Piece, Most Helpful Piece, Most Popular Piece, Most Controversial Piece, Most Surprisingly Successful Piece, Most Underrated Piece, and Most Pride-worthy Piece.
  • Pass this award on to seven other bloggers.

Seems simple enough. I think even my currently overtaxed brain can handle this.

SOMETHING NO ONE ELSE KNOWS ABOUT: Well, folks who know me “for reals” know this, and it has absolutely nothing to do with this blog or film, but … I used to have a nose ring! I got it on a whim one afternoon when I lived in Iowa and wore it for a year before I got tired of it and pulled it out.

MOST BEAUTIFUL PIECE: Well, I consider my screwball pictorial of Cary Grant to be the most appropriate choice for this category, seeing as how it features several beautiful (albeit goofy) photos of a seriously beautiful man. Oh, look. Here’s another one.

This, incidentally, is the wallpaper for my laptop, so every morning starts with an inner "squee!" and a sigh of pure feminine satisfaction.

MOST HELPFUL PIECE: This is kind of a cop-out, as I am linking an entire category as opposed to a single post, but I think my entries on women in early Hollywood are helpful in that they help expose film fans to these pioneering (and relatively unknown) figures whose work contributed to the success of the movie industry.

MOST POPULAR PIECE: My post on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which kicked off our year-long salute to the Disney animated canon, continues to draw an average of 700 views per month.

MOST CONTROVERSIAL PIECE: I don’t believe I’ve ever posted anything that I would classify as truly controversial, but my post on the Hays Code stirred up a bit of debate in the comment section.

MOST SURPRISINGLY SUCCESSFUL PIECE: I was very pleased by the reaction to the discussion that Carrie and I posted on Cinderella Jones for the CMBA “Guilty Pleasures” blogathon. Knowing that it wasn’t a very familiar film for many folks, and never having written a collaborative post in that way before, I wasn’t sure that readers would like it, but it remains one of the most commented-upon and popular entries ever posted here!

MOST UNDERRATED PIECE: I think I expected a bit more of a response to my week-long tribute to The Maltese Falcon last year. It’s such an iconic film, and opinions about it are generally pretty divided, so I was surprised to see fewer comments than I anticipated on those posts.

MOST PRIDE-WORTHY PIECE: I really love the two-part post I wrote on A Streetcar Named Desire and censorship last year.

And now to tag seven other deserving bloggers (apologies if some of you have already been tapped for this meme):

Caftan Woman

Grand Old Movies

I Shoot the Pictures

The Hollywood Revue

The Kitty Packard Pictorial

The Movie Projector

Via Margutta 51

Wonderfully talented writers, each and every one!

Thanks again, Dorian! Though it was hard to assign posts to each category, it was nonetheless a fun trip down blogging memory lane!

Anything you can be, I can be greater. Sooner or later, I’m greater than you.*

Posted on by under bloggy stuff, celebrating women in classic film

March is Women’s History Month–and today, March 8th, is International Women’s Day–so as we did last year, True Classics will be celebrating the contributions of women to the world of film with new entries in our “Women in Early Hollywood” series. Throughout the rest of the month, we will once again focus on some of the lesser-known female pioneers who helped shape the movie industry in its infancy and beyond.

Last year, I wrote lengthy treatises … er, entries … on early female directors Alice Guy-Blaché, Lois Weber, and Dorothy Davenport Reid; their successors Dorothy Arzner and Ida Lupino; and prolific writers Frances Marion, Anita Loos, and June Mathis. This month, we’ll take a look at a few more female directors and writers in addition to other behind-the-scenes figures, all of whom are largely unknown by many modern film fans.

This is a subject that is near and dear to me. Not to sound overly preachy or anything, but as the proud graduate of a women’s university, where a strong emphasis on the roles of women in history, culture, literature, and society underpinned many of my classes, I believe it is utterly vital to recognize and remember those women whose names and efforts may have been lost to the passage of time. This series is my small effort to do just that, and I hope you’ll enjoy learning about these fascinating women as much as I have!

I’ll kick things off at the beginning of next week, but in the meantime, this weekend I’ll be posting my entry for Jessica’s “Gone Too Soon” blogathon! If you haven’t already signed up, there’s still time, so check out the guidelines over at Comet Over Hollywood!

*And now I’m going to have the soundtrack to Annie Get Your Gun in my head all day long.