In the pantheon of showbiz families, from the Barrymores to the Baldwins, the most fascinating has to be the Ormonds. This strange bunch directed Lash La Rue westerns, took the Three Stooges on tour and made country-western hokum and sleaze…
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Many singers have transitioned nicely into movies. Look at Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Doris Day, Bing Crosby, Whitney Houston, David Bowie, Bette Midler, Jennifer Hudson. But personally, I’m fascinated with the cinematic hiccups- and not the obvious disasters like Mariah…
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I was recently spring cleaning and getting rid of a lot of old VHS tapes when I came across a pile I had squirreled away in the closet that really started me laughing. In the old days, I used to…
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Hollywood just loves giving itself awards. There’s Oscar, Emmy, the Golden Globes, the People’s choice, etc. You can barely turn your television on in the first couple months of the year without stumbling over an image of some actor breathlessly…
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Personally, I’ve never been to Florida. While I am partial to their orange juice- preferably mixed with a liter of vodka and ice cubes- these days the panhandle has little to offer celluloid sickos like me. That wasn’t always the…
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About the only LPs I’ve saved are those disastrously bad personality platters like A Dramatic Reading With Music (MGM), Sebastian Cabot’s 1967 hilariously pompous interpretations of Bob Dylan songs. Then there’s Way Out West (Tower), Mae West’s campy rock ‘n’…
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The history of cinema is replete with movie gimmicks. Look at A Quiet Place, which terrifies audience with barely any dialogue. But I love the more ambitious crackpot ones like Smell-o-vision, developed by Liz Taylor’s stepson Mike Todd Jr. for…
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Not having been raised Catholic my only exposure to nuns was in the movies, and these were primarily feel-good stories- Audrey Hepburn in The Nun’s Story, Debbie Reynolds in The Singing Nun, Ingrid Bergman in The Bells Of St. Mary’s,…
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I love collecting movie related postage stamps. James Dean, Alfred Hitchcock, Al Jolson. The new Lena Horne “Forever” stamp is just sublime. The 1997 release of stamps of famous Hollywood monsters was just sensational. It was such a joy putting…
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Some say that spring is a time for love. Frankly I’m more inclined to agree with whoever said love is a form of mental illness. Love doesn’t mean “never having to say you’re sorry”. It means having to say you’re…
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