Matinee Memories

By the early 1970s, Joan Crawford's status as a true icon of Hollywood's glory days was firmly established. But like her famed rival Bette Davis, the 60-something actress still had the yen to work, and while the vehicles and assignments came her way, the demands on her talents weren't equal to the task. Joan's movie career had ended with the British-made thriller TROG (1970), in which the force of her presence made the horror-themed production palatable, despite one biographer's carping about Joan being "hardly required to bother with acting at all; it is sufficient that she is merely present and keeps a straight face no matter what happens."* Sadly, fans wished her convincing performance as a wealthy blind matron who pays for a few hours of vision in "Eyes," the middle story of the three-part made-for-TV movie NIGHT GALLERY (1969) had been her adieu to the screen, surrounded as she was in a classier enterprise that served as the initial direct...

FORGOTTEN HORRORS, VOL. 10: THE MISSING YEARS, by Michael H. Price with Van Cliburn and George E. Turner. Lower Klopstokia: Cremo Studios, 2016, 359 pages. $30. The FORGOTTEN HORRORS franchise launched by George E. Turner and Michael H. Price with a single volume at the end of the 1970s heralded an appreciation of not only horror and science fiction films produced in Hollywood since the beginning of talking movies, but motion pictures whose creators included bizarre themes in what were intended as mainstream, non-genrified pictures. Many of these "forgotten horrors" had fallen into obscurity because thery were the product of B movie studios and independent producers, with some viewers finding their unknown status entirely justified. Not so for a growing legion of movie fans who encountered such films either on TV or home video and hungered for well-researched information and knowledgeable criticism, either good or bad. The original FORGOTTEN HORRORS volume, revised and...

R obert Osborne's passing from this mortal coil on March 6, 2017, at 84 leaves a void in the world of film appreciation that will be filled, but perhaps without the wealth of experience, knowledge and savvy that the onetime actor and columnist brought to his role as the lead host of Turner Classic Movies. But in the more than two decades in which he performed that role with a courtly and engaging manner, he set a standard for class and backstory about the films he introduced that the cable channel will continue to pursue as co-hosts Ben Mankiewicz and Tiffany Vazquez presumably step up to take his place. Not that I was always in love with Bob Osborne's approach and TCM's selection of films, but to each his own. I know he was enamored of the movies that defined Hollywood's Golden Age, especially musicals produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. But there were times I wondered if he had a certain disdain for some genres and really hadn't seen some of the flicks he discu...

FEUD: BETTE AND JOAN, the FX series that debuted March 5, is doing its part to shed light on the careers of screen legends and rivals Bette Davis (1908-1989) and Joan Crawford (1904-1977), not a bad thing given their influence on Hollywood acting style and history. While the series focuses primarily on Bette and Joan's first and only teaming for WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962) and obsessive need to top one another both professionally and personally, the program is rich in reference to the movies that made Bette, played by Susan Sarandon, and Joan, enacted by Jessica Lange, such enduring icons. (Not to mention the record of the show's third major character, BABY JANE producer-director Robert Aldrich, capably brought to life by Alfred Molina). The undeniable fact is that Davis and Crawford were both on their way to some kind of oblivion when BABY JANE's freak success put them in the spotlight again, earning its stars a new lease on life and movies of varying qua...