Western RoundUp: Final Resting Places, Western Filmmakers

Posted on April 28, 2026 by Laura Grieve

Final Resting Places

It’s time for another of my periodic tributes to Western filmmakers through sharing visits to their final resting places.

This is one of the ways I reflect on what each person’s work has contributed to the Western genre, giving all of us many happy hours of entertainment.

On Easter Sunday this year I paid a visit to Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills, where by pure chance I stumbled across the grave of the great Western screenwriter Borden Chase.  A special plaque on a nearby wall called my attention to his gravesite.

Borden Chase 1

Borden Chase wrote the screenplays for some of the greatest Westerns ever made, including Red River (1948), Winchester ’73 (1950), Bend of the River (1952), and The Far Country (1954). I’ve written about many of his films here over the years, including listing Bend of the River as one of my all-time favorite Westerns in my very first post here, back in 2018. I also wrote about a TCM Classic Film Festival screening of Winchester ’73 in 2019.

Borden Chase 2

Actor David Carradine is also at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills. His entire family has quite a legacy in Westerns, including his father John appearing in John Ford’s classic Stagecoach (1939). David’s Western work included appearing with his brothers Keith and Robert in The Long Riders (1980), in which David played Cole Younger. Robert, who was a regular guest at the Lone Pine Film Festival, sadly passed away earlier this year.

David Carradine

Another actor who played Cole Younger was Frank Lovejoy, who starred in the title role in Cole Younger, Gunfighter (1958).  Lovejoy, a prominent radio actor along with starring in movies, also appeared in the Westerns Black Bart (1948) and The Charge at Feather River (1953). Sadly, Lovejoy was only 50 when he died unexpectedly of a heart attack. He’s buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California, alongside his wife, actress Joan Banks. Joan appeared in a small handful of TV Western episodes.

Frank Lovejoy

Another highly regarded screenwriter, Nunnally Johnson, whose remains are interred at Westwood Village Memorial Park, wrote several Westerns, including Jesse James (1939), Along Came Jones (1945), and The Gunfighter (1950).

Johnson’s wife Dorris Bowdon, who is memorialized at his final resting place, had a brief screen career, including appearing in three John Ford films, one of which was The Grapes of Wrath (1940). 

The Grapes of Wrath was written by Bowdon’s husband and costarred David Carradine’s father John.  Bowdon and Carradine were also both in Ford’s Revolutionary War era Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), set on the New York frontier. As readers of past Final Resting Places columns may have noticed, there are endless connections to be found among the classic era filmmakers remembered here.

Nunnally Johnson, Dorris Bowdon

Tyrone Power’s leading lady in Jesse James (1939), written by Nunnally Johnson, was Nancy Kelly; she is memorialized on a plaque at Westwood Village Memorial Park. Kelly won a Tony Award for the Broadway production of The Bad Seed (1955) and was the older sister of Jack Kelly, who starred as Bart Maverick on TV’s Maverick. 

Nancy Kelly Closeup

Robert Lowery – who coincidentally made at least one film with Nancy Kelly — was a busy working actor for three decades ahead of his early passing in 1971, aged 58.  Lowery appeared in numerous “B” Westerns alongside stars such as Don “Red” Barry and “Wild Bill” Elliott, including I Shot Billy the Kid (1950) and The Homesteaders (1953). Later in his career Lowery appeared in some of the ‘60s “Geezer Westerns” produced by A.C. Lyles, who I wrote about in a column last year. Robert Lowery is buried at Valhalla Memorial Park in North Hollywood, California.

Robert Lowery

Another veteran of Lyles’ “Geezer Westerns” was Bill Williams, who is buried at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills under his real name, Herman A. W. Katt.  Williams had a long career in Westerns, including The Cariboo Trail (1950), a Randolph Scott film which I wrote about here 2020. He met his wife, actress Barbara Hale, when they filmed the “B” Western West of the Pecos (1945), which starred a young Robert Mitchum.

Bill Williams, Barbara Hale

As of my last visit to Forest Lawn, Barbara Hale’s gravesite alongside her husband was unmarked, as seen above.  Hale, best known as a star of TV’s Perry Mason, appeared in many Westerns, including The Lone Hand (1953) with Joel McCrea, which I wrote about here after it was shown at McCrea Ranch in 2023.  Williams and Hale’s three children include actor William Katt (The Greatest American Hero).

In 2019 I included Hale’s Perry Mason costar William Talman in my column on “Unexpected Western Leads” thanks to his role in the enjoyable Two-Gun Lady (1955), which costarred Peggie Castle and Marie Windsor.  Talman also appeared with Dana Andrews in Smoke Signal (1955).

William Talman

Our final visit in this column honors character actor Griff Barnett, whose film career began with the serial The Lone Ranger (1938). Over the course of his 20-year career Barnett appeared in a great many Westerns of all types, with favorites including Cattle Drive (1951) and The Duel at Silver Creek (1952). His 1954 appearance in a Lone Ranger TV episode brought his career rather “full circle”!  Barnett is buried at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, California.

Griff Barnett

For additional photos of the burial places of Western filmmakers, please visit my tribute columns from May 2019, February 2022, November 2, 2022, November 29, 2022, April 2023, November 2023, March 2024, July 2024, February 2025, and November 2025.

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– Laura Grieve for Classic Movie Hub

Laura can be found at her blog, Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings, where she’s been writing about movies since 2005, and on Twitter at @LaurasMiscMovie. A lifelong film fan, Laura loves the classics including Disney, Film Noir, Musicals, and Westerns.  She regularly covers Southern California classic film festivals.  Laura will scribe on all things western at the ‘Western RoundUp’ for CMH.

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Silents are Golden: A Closer Look At The Wind (1928)

Posted on April 23, 2026 by Lea Stans

A Closer Look At The Wind (1928)

Lillian Gish The Wind
Lillian Gish, The Wind

In 1927, cinema was famously experiencing a time of transition from the silent to talkies, kickstarted by the popularity of Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer (1927). Directors and stars would soon be faced with a decision, whether deliberate or inadvertent: which silent would be their last before the move to recorded sound? Would they be lucky enough to make a final silent film worthy of praise in that uncertain time? In Lillian Gish’s case her final silent did not seem like a triumph at first, thanks to being a flop at the box office in spite of some critical praise. But its reputation would grow steadily over time, and today it’s widely considered one of the great masterpieces of the late 1920s.

Lillian Gish The Wind

One of the silent era’s top American actresses, Gish had left the stage in 1912 to act in Biograph films along with her sister Dorothy. The two would work closely with director D.W. Griffith for a number of years, especially the dedicated and driven Lillian, who some would consider Griffith’s “muse.” As the industry began to change in the 1920s, Gish would star in The White Sister (1923) for Metro, which soon became part of the brand-new MGM studio. She would remain with the prestigious MGM until the end of the silent era.

Gish had considerable influence on her pictures at MGM, being known for her dedication to artistry. She would even turn down a $1 million-per-picture deal in favor of getting a percentage of film profits, wanting to ensure more of the budget would go towards hiring talented writers and actors. It was her idea to make The Wind, based on a dramatic novel by Dorothy Scarborough. It told the story of a young woman who goes to live on a ranch in the Texas plains that’s plagued with constant wind. She marries a Texan out of necessity and also fends off advances from a different man, all while the blasting wind slowly drives her mad. The gritty setting and elements of psychological horror excited Gish’s imagination, and The Wind would go into production in late April of 1927.

Lillian Gish on location
Lillian on location.

The distinguished Swedish director Victor Sjöström was hand-picked by Gish for the new project. She had previously worked with him on The Scarlet Letter (1926) and had been impressed by his meticulous nature and encouragement of subtle acting. One of her co-stars was be Lars Hansen, another Swedish import who was also a co-star from The Scarlet Letter–The Wind was very much a reunion of several fine talents. The Australian-born Dorothy Cumming and frequent screen villain Montagu Love rounded out the rest of the cast.

Lillian Gish and Lars Hanson in The Wind (1928)
Lillian Gish and Lars Hanson.

Much of the film was shot in the Mojave desert, which even in the spring was growing unbearably hot. By the time shooting ended in late June temps were nearing 120 degrees and the completed film reels had to be frozen to keep the coating from melting. Gish would remember the shoot as the most difficult one she had ever experienced, even more difficult than the icy river scenes in Way Down East (1920). Crewmembers had to wear tall boots to guard against rattlesnakes and goggles to protect their eyes from blowing sand. But the actors were not always so lucky. To simulate the blasting Texas winds, eight airplane propellers were brought in and sawdust and pots of sulphur helped add to the illusion of billowing sand. Gish recalled the sulphur nearly ruining her hair and being constantly worried about getting blinded by blowing debris.

Lillian Gish The Wind

Fortunately, all the hardships resulted in a stunningly memorable film. Sjöström magnificently blended the psychological aspects of the drama with the film’s harsh natural surroundings and rustic buildings. The wind is as much of a character as Letty or Lars Hansen’s Lige, its relentless blasts echoing the characters’ inner turmoils and desires. The exceptionally strong “norther” wind is represented by a ghostly horse during the film’s most dramatic moments, an effect that can be nearly sublime.

Lillian Gish The Wind 3

Gish, of course, handled the tragic aspects of the story with her renowned skill. In some scenes, such as a frightening moment where she peers through a window, her emotions were conveyed entirely through her eyes. These skills were well-matched with Sjöström’s thoughtful “show, don’t tell” touches, such as a scene where different shots show Letty and Lige’s feet pacing the floor just before a dramatic moment.

One bit of trivia about The Wind turned out to be folklore. Gish would always recall that they filmed an ending that was faithful to the novel, showing the heroine running out into the sandstorm and being whirled away by the wind. She would say that MGM insisted on shooting a happier ending, certain that audiences would be turned off. Apparently no such tragic ending was actually shot, possibly pointing to a lapse in Gish’s memory. In any case, the happier ending may seem trite at first glance but may have been considered more modern at the time, if a little cliched.

Lillian Gish The Wind 4

The Wind received a decent amount of critical praise but produced little box office luster in the U.S. Most audiences were already intrigued by the new talkies and silents were starting to look passé. Gish would leave MGM after The Wind’s financial disappointment and in subsequent years she would start to favor the stage over the movies. But her masterpiece would truly stand the test of time. We know today that the late 1920s produced some of the era’s finest silent films, and while it would take many years for that fact to be recognized, The Wind is now considered an unmissable highlight of the silent era. Lillian was–and likely still is–justly proud.

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–Lea Stans for Classic Movie Hub

You can read all of Lea’s Silents are Golden articles here.

Lea Stans is a born-and-raised Minnesotan with a degree in English and an obsessive interest in the silent film era (which she largely blames on Buster Keaton). In addition to blogging about her passion at her site Silent-ology, she is a columnist for the Silent Film Quarterly and has also written for The Keaton Chronicle.

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Monsters and Matinees: Diving into ‘The Monster That Challenged the World’

Posted on April 18, 2026 by Toni Ruberto

Diving into ‘The Monster That Challenged the World’

Oh, the horrors of 1950s B-movies. And I’m not talking scary good, but scary bad.

So many of the creative ideas for monsters were never realized because of low budgets and ridiculously short shooting schedules. Viewers accept that the creatures in these films might look cheap and even laughable, perhaps because that’s considered part of the charm.

But sometimes a low-budget creature can be interesting enough to grab your attention. That’s what happened when I saw photos of the title creature in The Monster That Challenged the World (1957).

The creature rises from the ocean in The Monster That Challenged the World.

It was a giant slug with two big eyes and was surprisingly intriguing. I can’t put my finger on why it looked interesting instead of cheap or ridiculous, but it did. So I went with my gut, watched the film and wasn’t disappointed. Even the writing surprised me in a good way with a touch of humor, characters with some depth and the many tropes we love from ‘50s horror films.

The Monster That Challenged the World follows the horror B-movie formula: An opening narration to set the scene, some type of research/experiments, natural disaster, mysterious deaths and a plucky group of officials and townsfolk who will save the world. Lest not forget grand proclamations which, in this film, include “I’ve never seen anything like this!” and my favorite, “From the moment they’re born, they’re hungry!!” Cue the dramatic music and the warning for humanity. This is why we love these films.

That opening voice-over is usually done by a deep-voiced narrator who holds our attention with his serious tone. Not here. This guy speaks in an odd monotone like a school principal making an announcement on the loudspeaker. By the end of the film, I realized the deadpan tone may have been on purpose since the movie has an unexpected dry sense of humor. (More on that later.)

A mysterious gooey substance is left behind when people go missing in The Monster That Challenged the World.

Our narrator sets the scene in Southern California at the Salton Sea, a strange (and real) phenomenon of 400 square miles of salt water in the desert. So it’s also the site of secret experiments and a Naval research base. Jump-starting the story is a small earthquake, a parachute jumper and two sailors in a patrol boat. We’ll quickly have our first three victims and plenty of questions, like what is that gooey substance on the boat?

Never fear, we’ll get answers along with talk of radioactivity, ancient waterways and prehistoric eggs that means there’s more than one creature, plus explanations of how the dead are drained of blood and water.

It even has the educational nature film scene, also common in these horror movies, where the smart guy explains what’s going on. He’s found that whatever is killing people is like a prehistoric mollusk (think snails). We see one genus, the gonaxis, that has “scissor-like teeth” to shred the flesh off its victims. They are such tiny little teeth that the gonaxis is somehow cute and creepy at the same time.

Two eyes and tiny little teeth – how cute. A nature film shown during The Monster That Challenged the World shows the small mollusk known as the gonaxis that is now growing taller than a human.

Beaches will be quarantined and patrols will roam the highways, but the body count continues. It’s up to Dr. Rogers (played by Hans Conried), Commander John Twillinger (Tim Holt) and Dr. Tad Jones (played by familiar face Max Showalter who is billed here as Casey Adams) to use their varied skills to get to the bottom of everything.

Also in the mix are Gail MacKenzie (Audrey Dalton), a widowed secretary at the research facility, and her adorable little daughter Sandy (Mimi Gibson) who just wants to spend time with the bunnies in the lab. What could go wrong? Exactly what you might expect, so be prepared for a tense scene as one of the creatures looks for its next meal.

An oversized mollusk attacks a child in this terrifying scene from The Monster That Challenged the World.

I think the creature scenes work well because they don’t show too much. We don’t see it “walking,” for example. When it shows up, it makes a statement like when it rises out of the water to tower over a boat or when one tears apart a door with its sharp teeth.

In an interview with Tom Weaver for his book Return of the B Science Fiction and Horror Heroes, producer Arthur Gardner said the creature was made by special effects man Augie Lohman. It stood about 10 feet high and weighed about 1,500 pounds. with a Fiberglas exterior. It took three men – Lohman and two assistants – to control it through a series of air pressure valves.

As tragedy strikes, Commander Twillinger (Tim Holt) softens up to others including Gail (Audrey Dalton).

Unexpected humor, even depth

Since scripts for B-horror movies are so formulaic, there’s usually not much to say about them. But screenwriter Pat Fielder has done a nice job that raises the film up a notch. Her characters have backstories and I like how Commander Twillinger lightened up from being a terse military dude in early scenes to become more patient and likeable.

There’s a low-key humor that allows viewers to smile and even laugh. Case in point is a scene at the morgue:

“The lieutenant said there was something unnatural about the condition of one of the bodies,” says a doctor.

“There was – it was shriveled,” deadpans Commander Twillinger, which made me laugh.

Wait until you meet museum archivist Lewis Clark Dobbs, played by Milton Parsons. It’s a small role that is uncredited in the film, yet it takes over the two scenes he is in. Navy officials visit the museum seeking maps of underground rivers to find more creatures. There, they meet the droll archivist who puts an odd emphasis on words as he speaks, drawing raised eyebrows.

Milton Parsons, left, plays a museum curator with a hilariously droll personality. He may be the best thing about The Monster That Challenged the World.

Credit Parsons, a character actor who played more than 150 roles, for the portrayal. But also thank Fielder who smartly gave him a running joke about the failure of “Proposition 14A” (it would have allowed the museum to add a room for maps and other documents). Dobbs repeatedly brings it up, to reinforce the fact that the museum doesn’t have maps because Proposition 14A failed.

“Every once in a while, somebody dies and leaves us a whole lot of documents for our room – the one [room] we didn’t get, you understand. Proposition 14A was defeated,” the archivist says.

I wanted more of this character, but realize too much of him would have spoiled it. He would have been a great recurring character on television sitcom.

Background and trivia

  • Fielder and director Arnold Laven also worked together on The Vampire (1957), The Return of Dracula (1958) and Geronimo (1962). Her name was all over television from the late 1950s through the early 1980s. She wrote multiple episodes of The Rifleman, Baretta, The Eleventh Hour and McMillan & Wife, plus the 1981 mini-series Goliath Awaits with Christopher Lee, and single episodes of everything from Starsky and Hutch to The Love Boat and B.J. and the Bear and The High Chaparral.
  • In 1951, Laven formed a production company with Jules V. Levy and Arthur Gardner which eventually became Levy-Gardner-Laven. He came up with the concept for the television series The Rifleman and was an executive producer on The Big Valley.
  • Look for Jody McCrea, son of Joel McCrea and Frances Dee, in the brief role as doomed Seaman Fred Johnson.

– Toni Ruberto for Classic Movie Hub

You can read all of Toni’s Monsters and Matinees articles here.

Toni Ruberto, born and raised in Buffalo, N.Y., is an editor and writer at The Buffalo News. She shares her love for classic movies in her blog, Watching Forever and is a member and board chair of the Classic Movie Blog Association. Toni was the president of the former Buffalo chapter of TCM Backlot and led the offshoot group, Buffalo Classic Movie Buffs. She is proud to have put Buffalo and its glorious old movie palaces in the spotlight as the inaugural winner of the TCM in Your Hometown contest. You can find Toni on Twitter at @toniruberto or on Bluesky at @watchingforever.bsky.social

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Noir Nook: Veda’s Villainy – Mildred’s Fault?

Posted on April 16, 2026 by Karen Burroughs Hannsberry

Veda’s Villainy – Mildred’s Fault?

One of my many favorite podcasts is Front Row Classics – the host, Brandon Davis, covers a wide variety of classic films, with a spate of first-rate guests, and in such interesting ways. An episode I heard recently centered on villains in classic films, and one of the characters in the spotlight was Veda, brought to life by Ann Blyth in the 1945 classic Mildred Pierce. I’ve long seen Veda as a villain myself – she possessed a deceptively attractive exterior that masked a self-absorbed sociopath – but during the podcast discussion, the theory was posited that it was Veda’s hard-working mother, Mildred (played by Oscar-winner Joan Crawford), who made Veda the way she was.

And that gave me pause. A long pause.

Joan Crawford, Ann Blyth, Mildred Pierce 1
Joan Crawford and Ann Blyth, Mildred Pierce

You may already know that Mildred Pierce is one of my top 10 noirs, and that I’m quite fond of the film’s titular femme (and not just because she’s the divorced mother of two girls and loves to bake! Twinning!). She’s flawed, sure, but is she the root cause of her daughter’s villainous conduct? In this month’s Noir Nook, I’m taking a deep dive into this notion. (And watch your step going forward – spoilers abound!)

The film opens with the murder of the dapper Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott), and while we don’t see the responsible party, we clearly hear Monte’s last word: “Mildred.” The story leading up to this deadly deed is told mostly in flashback, focusing squarely on Mildred – wife to recently unemployed Bert (Bruce Bennett), stay-at-home mother to Veda and her younger sister, Kay (Jo Ann Marlowe), and pie-baker extraordinaire. When Bert spends a bit too much time with the attractive neighborhood divorcee, Mrs. Biederhof (Lee Patrick), Mildred gives him the boot, making ends meet by working as a waitress, and later parlaying her talents in the kitchen into a chain of popular restaurants. Others in Mildred’s sphere include her closest friend Ida Corwin (Eve Arden); Wally Fay (Jack Carson), Bert’s former business partner and an investor in Mildred’s restaurant business; and Mildred’s second husband, the ill-fated Monte. And speaking of ill fates, we learn in the film’s riveting climax that the purveyor of bullets in the first scene was none other than Veda – who, we also discover, had been carrying on an affair with her mom’s handsome hubby. (I told you there’d be spoilers!)

Eve Arden, Mildred Pierce 2
Eve Arden

But other than being a homewrecking murderess, who is Veda, exactly? Let’s take a look.

When the movie first flashes back, we meet Veda on her way home from school, as she and Kay watch their father load a suitcase and an armful of clothes into his car and drive away. Veda and Kay, incidentally, couldn’t be more different – Kay is a tomboy who wears pigtails and plays football in the street with the neighborhood boys, while Veda wouldn’t be caught dead in pants and exudes an air of sophistication and superiority, even as a young teen. Within a matter of minutes, Veda gives us three salient and revelatory clues to her personality. First, Veda snootily informs her sister that she acts like a “peasant,” adding, “I think you ought to take a little more pride in the way you look.” Second, Veda tells Mildred that she’s learning a new piece from her piano teacher called “Valse Brilliante,” and offers an imperious translation: “That means “Brilliant Waltz.” And finally, after Mildred delivers a vague explanation for the split between her and her husband, Veda responds, “If you mean Mrs. Biederhof, Mother, I must say my sympathy is all with you. She’s distinctly middle class.”

Ann Blyth, Zachary Scott, Joan Crawford, Mildred Pierce 3
Ann Blyth, Zachary Scott and Joan Crawford

These examples are just the tip of the Veda iceberg; throughout the film, we continue to see just what kind of person she is, even if her mother doesn’t. And we also see the lengths to which Mildred is willing to go in her futile attempt to secure Veda’s happiness. But the question lingers: could Mildred have chosen another way? For one, she certainly could have called Veda on her snarky comments and disrespectful asides, like in the scene where Mildred overhears Veda complaining about her new dress. (“I wouldn’t be seen dead in this rag. It’s horrible. How could she have bought me such a thing?”) Instead of getting all in her feelings, Mildred should’ve snatched that dress off of Veda and told her she could get a babysitting job and buy her own damn clothes. Or the scene where Veda makes it clear that she’d want her mother to marry a man she doesn’t love if it would result in material gain – although Mildred doesn’t let the comment completely slide, she certainly could have been more forceful in confronting Veda’s selfishness and illuminating the moral deficiency of her sentiments.

Joan Crawford, Mildred Pierce 4

Instead, we seldom see Mildred chastising Veda, questioning her motives, or exacting punishments, except in the scene when Mildred learns that her daughter has engaged in an extortion scheme by falsely claiming to be pregnant. She memorably orders Veda to leave their home – “Get out before I kill you,” she tells her – and we practically cheer. As it turns out, though, Mildred later reverts to form and, ironically, marries a man she doesn’t love (Monte Beragon) in order to give Veda the type of upper-crusty lifestyle she craves.

But is this kind of behavior on Mildred’s part the cause of Veda’s villainy? In my opinion, absolutely not.

In my view, the relationship between Mildred and Veda is reminiscent of those cases where someone marries a partner who has exhibited clear red flags, hoping that love can “change” them. Mildred, I think, believes that Veda’s happiness can be secured through material means, and that this will translate into daughterly love and respect. But it’s not Mildred’s viewpoint and resulting actions that make Veda who she is – nor does Mildred degrade Veda’s character by buying her a car or installing her in a renovated mansion. Veda is simply Veda from the beginning.

Ann Blyth, Joan Crawford, Mildred Pierce 6

An exchange between Mildred and Bert shines an illuminating light on this entire matter. When Bert picks up the girls for their trip to Lake Arrowhead, Mildred explains her plans to file for divorce – ostensibly for financial reasons and for the sake of the children, but especially for Veda, since Kay “doesn’t need so much thinking about.” Bert responds that Kay is “twice the girl Veda is and always will be. She thinks you’re wonderful.” And Mildred’s reply is telling: “Maybe that’s why I keep trying to please Veda.”

In this brief conversation, Mildred recognizes that she is more fully valued by her younger daughter, and that her persistent drive to win Veda’s approval shapes her actions. Bert, for his part, demonstrates a clear-eyed understanding not only of his daughters’ qualities but of the family dynamic as a whole, warning Mildred that she will “always get kicked around” in her efforts to win Veda over.

Ann Blyth, Joan Crawford, Mildred Pierce 7

One might speculate that Veda could have wound up on a different course if Mildred had dispensed a few more slaps, as she did in the scene where she reveals her waitressing job. Or that Veda would have reformed if Mildred had directly challenged her daughter about her bad behavior instead of blaming Monte’s influence and showering Veda with more gifts. But I don’t think so. From Day One, Veda was exactly what Mildred called her after learning about her extortion scheme – cheap and horrible. I don’t know what took Mildred so long to acknowledge that, but I certainly don’t think she was the cause of this flaw in Veda’s makeup. Veda’s contempt and disrespect for her mother, and her sociopathic self-absorption, were qualities that were present long before Mildred dispensed her first present or overlooked her first nasty comment. (Don’t get me started on nurture vs. nature – Kay was an absolute doll.)

And just one more observation. Near the end of the film, where Veda is seen desperately begging her mother not to turn her in to the police, she finally stops Mildred in her tracks with the claim, “It’s your fault I’m the way I am.” I’m certain that this single line can be regarded by many as a transparent truism, but not for me. It was tossed out by Veda in a last-ditch effort to secure Mildred’s aid following Monte’s murder, but I don’t swallow it any more than Mildred should have. Instead, I look at another declaration offered by Veda – this one earlier in the picture, when Mildred encounters Veda at Wally’s riverfront dive and begs her to return home. Without missing a beat, Veda declines the offer, telling Mildred that the way her mother wants to live “isn’t good enough” for her, and, most significantly, affirming: “You know how I am.”

Jo Ann Marlowe, Ann Blyth and Joan Crawford, Mildred Pierce 8
Jo Ann Marlowe, Ann Blyth and Joan Crawford

For my money, that says it in a nutshell. Along with the viewer, Veda knows exactly how she is. Bert does as well, and Ida. And Wally. And although it takes Mildred a long while, eventually she, too, has to admit what kind of person she’d brought into the world – and that there’s nothing she could do about it.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments!

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– Karen Burroughs Hannsberry for Classic Movie Hub

You can read all of Karen’s Noir Nook articles here.

Karen Burroughs Hannsberry is the author of the Shadows and Satin blog, which focuses on movies and performers from the film noir and pre-Code eras, and the editor-in-chief of The Dark Pages, a bimonthly newsletter devoted to all things film noir. Karen is also the author of two books on film noir – Femme Noir: The Bad Girls of Film and Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir. You can follow Karen on Twitter at @TheDarkPages.
If you’re interested in learning more about Karen’s books, you can read more about them on amazon here:

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Classic Movie Travels: James Shigeta

Posted on April 9, 2026 by Annette Bochenek

Classic Movie Travels: James Shigeta

James Shigeta
James Shigeta

James Saburo Shigeta was born in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, on June 17, 1929, to Satoko Tamura Shigeta and Howard Koichi Shigeta. His father was a contractor who immigrated from Japan.

Shigeta was a third-generation Japanese American, graduating from President Theodore Roosevelt High School and studying drama at New York University. When completing ROTC, he enlisted in the Hawaii National Guard’s 258th Infantry, ultimately enlisting in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Korean War. He served for two-and-a-half years, achieving the rank of Staff Sergeant.

Prior to enlisting in 1951, he won first prize on Ted Mack’s The Original Amateur Hour television show in 1950. He soon embarked on a singing career, teamed with Charles K.L. Davis, a Hawaiian operatic tenor. Their agent gave them the “non-ethnic” stage names for Guy Brion (Shigeta) and Charles Durand (Davis). They performed at superclubs in the United States, singing at the Mocambo, Los Angeles Players Club, and more.

During the war, he entertained troops in California. While on the way to Korea, the ceasefire led him to Japan. He was discharged from the Marines and hired by the theatrical division of Japan’s Toho Studios. He did not speak Japanese until Toho Studios invited him to be a musical star, working under his real name. He soon became a success and was dubbed “The Frank Sinatra of Japan.”

 In 1958, Tokyo’s Nichigeki Theater starred Shigeta as the lead in their Cherry Blossom Show, bringing the show to Australia. The production toured throughout the country and Shigeta received many positive reviews.

Shigeta returned to the United States to perform on The Dinah Shore Show and later performed in Holiday in Japan at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Shigeta made his screen debut in Crimson Kimono (1959). This role was progressive for its time, as Shigeta, an Asian American, portrayed an Asian American detective with typical American speech patterns, rather than a non-Asian actor passing as Asian American and speaking in broken English.

He also appeared in Walk Like a Dragon (1960) while also continuing his Holiday in Japan performances. He was even transported by ambulance from his last Holiday in Japan show to Paramount’s studio to ensure that he would arrive on time.

Additionally, Shigeta appeared in Cry for Happy (1961) alongside Glenn Ford, Donald O’Connor, and Miyoshi Umeki. He also appeared as Wang Ta in the Academy Award-nominated film version of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song (1961) with Nancy Kwan and Umeki. He appeared in Bridge to the Sun (1961) with Carroll Baker and Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1965) with Elvis Presley.

Miyoshi Umeki and James Shigeta, Flower Drum Song
Miyoshi Umeki and James Shigeta, Flower Drum Song

He also secured the lead in The King and I, touring the United States as part of the production in 1969.

Shigeta carried out many guest appearances and recurring roles on television, including a guest appearance on Perry Mason and a recurring role in Medical Center. He continued his film work with Midway (1976), Die Hard (1988), Cage II: The Arena of Death (1994), and a voice role in Mulan (1998). His final film role was in The People I’ve Slept With (2009).

Shigeta passed away in his sleep on July 28, 2014, in West Hollywood, California. He was 85 years old. His funeral service was held at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, and he was interred in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii.

In 1930 and 1940, the family resided at 1625 Liliha St., Honolulu, Hawaii. Shigeta’s father worked as a plumber and pipefitter at this time. In 1950, the family moved to 419A Liliha Court Ln., Honolulu, Hawaii. At this point, Shigeta’s father worked as a shop foreman for an engineering company and his mother worked as a salesperson at a bakery. Both homes no longer stand.

President Theodore Roosevelt High School continues to operate and is located at 1120 Nehoa St., Honolulu, Hawaii.

President Theodore Roosevelt High School
President Theodore Roosevelt High School

The National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific is located at 2177 Pūowaina Dr., Honolulu, Hawaii.

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–Annette Bochenek for Classic Movie Hub

Annette Bochenek pens our monthly Classic Movie Travels column. You can read all of Annette’s Classic Movie Travel articles here.

Annette Bochenek, Ph.D., is a film historian, professor, and avid scholar of Hollywood’s Golden Age. She manages the “Hometowns to Hollywood” blog, in which she profiles her trips to the hometowns of classic Hollywood stars. She has also been featured on the popular classic film-oriented television network, Turner Classic Movies. A regular columnist for Classic Movie Hub, her articles have appeared in TCM Backlot, Silent Film Quarterly, Nostalgia Digest, The Dark Pages Film Noir Newsletter, and Chicago Art Deco Society Magazine.

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Silver Screen Standards: Love and Language in Ball of Fire (1941)

Posted on April 2, 2026 by Jennifer Garlen

Love and Language in Ball of Fire (1941)

With a title like Ball of Fire, you expect real fireworks, and this 1941 screwball comedy delivers them with spectacular energy and skill. There’s so much to love about the film that it’s hard to know where to start, much less how to boil it down to a single, short discussion of the picture’s many outstanding qualities. We start with a modernized twist on the Snow White fairy tale penned by Billy Wilder, Thomas Monroe, and Charles Brackett, which is brought to life by direction from Howard Hawks and the acting talents of a first-rate cast, including Barbara Stanwyck as the titular (and titillating) ball of fire and Gary Cooper as the academic bachelor who gets overheated in her presence. Supporting the two leads are iconic classic stars like Dana Andrews, Dan Duryea, Henry Travers, S.Z. Sakall, Oscar Homolka, Leonid Kinskey, and Richard Haydn, each of them giving memorable performances that keep the large ensemble from becoming muddled. As a former academic myself, I love the re-imagining of the fairy tale dwarfs as scholars and the ways in which their intellectual specialties drive both the dialogue and the plot, and I find their found family dynamic a deeply moving element of the story. With Gary Cooper’s character specializing in language, it’s little wonder that language and love are entwined in this story, and those two elements seem worthy of some additional examination, given the many ways they manifest in the picture.

This promotional still highlights the romantic chemistry of Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper as the leads and also the beautiful Edith Head gown Stanwyck wears in her first scenes.
This promotional still highlights the romantic chemistry of Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper as the leads and also the beautiful Edith Head gown Stanwyck wears in her first scenes.

Cooper plays Professor Bertram Potts, a former child prodigy now grown and leading a group of scholars in their creation of a large encyclopedia on which they have already been working for nine years. The men, all bachelors except for the widower, Professor Oddly (Richard Haydn), live together and commit all their energy to their work until Bertram accidentally gives night club singer Sugarpuss O’Shea (Barbara Stanwyck) the idea of hiding out from the police in their house. Sugarpuss is already involved with wanted gangster Joe Lilac (Dana Andrews), but that doesn’t stop her from lighting a fire in Bertram’s inexperienced heart. Unfortunately, Joe realizes that a wife can’t be made to testify against her husband, so Sugarpuss has to choose between marrying the mobster or the scholar, and Joe is willing to take extreme measures to influence her decision.

Sugarpuss (Stanwyck) and her cold foot appeal to the assembled scholars for mercy after Bertram Potts (Cooper) says she can’t stay overnight in their house.
Sugarpuss (Stanwyck) and her cold foot appeal to the assembled scholars for mercy after Bertram Potts (Cooper) says she can’t stay overnight in their house.

Bertram’s desire to learn modern American slang creates the opportunity for Sugarpuss to enter his life but also hints at his unconscious urge to leave his monastic confinement for a freer, more fully realized existence in the world. As a linguist, Bertram knows many words and their meanings, but his brief summary of his own life reveals that he has been constantly locked away with his studies since early childhood, leaving little time for him to comprehend words like “passion” and “sex,” much less “love” in a romantic context. If Sugarpuss is Snow White (albeit rather drifted, as the joke goes) then Bertram is Rapunzel or Sleeping Beauty, awaiting rescue from the imprisoning tower of a dry scholarly life. He ventures into the nightclubs and city streets to find a living language at work and play, but he doesn’t really begin to imagine having that kind of life for himself until Sugarpuss boogies her way into his heart.

The most important word that Sugarpuss and the other consultants teach Bertram is “corn,” a slang term that classic movie fans know well from the description of Frank Capra’s sentimental movies as “Capra-corn.” Critics originally meant the term derisively, but Ball of Fire argues that corn can be endearing and lovable, especially when embodied in a package that looks like Gary Cooper. For all its gangsters and third act hijinks, Ball of Fire is an unabashedly corny movie, one that sees its heroine exchange her jaded view and materialist aims for true love with a shy, naïve scholar who, as she says, “doesn’t know how to kiss, the jerk.” Bertram’s love for her is passionate, but, ironically, the linguist can’t find the words to express that to her. It’s shown not told, in the way sunlight on her hair mesmerizes him, in the way he rushes off to cool his neck after she kisses him, and in the way he literally learns to fight for her by studying a boxing guide on his way to stop her from marrying Joe Lilac.

Bertram and the professors find themselves held hostage by gangster Duke Pastrami (Dan Duryea).
Bertram and the professors find themselves held hostage by gangster Duke Pastrami (Dan Duryea).

While Sugarpuss and Bertram teach each other about romantic love, they also come to appreciate the different kind of love experienced in the found family of scholars. It’s clear that the older scholars regard Bertram not only as their leader but also as a beloved younger brother or even son. They delight in the rambunctious energy Sugarpuss brings into their lives and root enthusiastically for the young couple. They even join Bertram’s heroic quest to save his lady love from forced marriage to Joe, although instead of a white charger they all ride a white garbage truck to the rescue. In a cast of veteran character actors and scene-stealers, it’s Richard Haydn, really the same age as Cooper but made up to look elderly, who gets the best bits of both physical comedy and sentiment. His Professor Oddly, the sole widower of the group, struggles to explain romantic love to Bertram given his Victorian sensibilities, but his tender memories of his long-dead wife are deeply moving to the audience and his fellow characters. When the scholars join together to sing “Sweet Genevieve” in tribute to Oddly’s lost love, it’s the epitome of corn in the very sweetest sense, old-fashioned and utterly sincere but so emotional for Oddly that he leaves the room because of the depth of feeling the gesture stirs. It’s clear that his friends love him very much, just as they love Bertram and extend their affection to Sugarpuss, who is no more immune to their corny charms than she is to those of Bertram. We don’t see their future together, but the other professors will always be part of the life Sugarpuss and Bertram share because they really are a family.

Bruised but victorious, Bertram wins his lady’s hand as Professors Oddly (Richard Haydn) and Magenbruch (S.Z. Sakall) react to the scene.
Bruised but victorious, Bertram wins his lady’s hand as Professors Oddly (Richard Haydn) and Magenbruch (S.Z. Sakall) react to the scene.

Ball of Fire earned four Oscar nominations, including a nod for Stanwyck as Best Actress, but it went home empty-handed in a year that also included Citizen Kane, How Green Was My Valley, The Maltese Falcon, and Sergeant York, for which Gary Cooper actually won Best Actor. Other screwball comedies from director Howard Hawks include Twentieth Century (1934), Bringing Up Baby (1938), and His Girl Friday (1940). For more comedy starring Barbara Stanwyck, see The Mad Miss Manton (1938), The Lady Eve (1941), and Christmas in Connecticut (1945), and for more of Cooper’s comedy roles, try Design for Living (1933), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), and Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938). Stanwyck and Cooper also star together in Meet John Doe (1941) and Blowing Wild (1953). In 1948, Hawks directed Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo in a musical remake of Ball of Fire called A Song is Born, in which the focus shifts from language to music. Mary Field plays the same character, Miss Totten, in both versions.

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— Jennifer Garlen for Classic Movie Hub

Jennifer Garlen pens our monthly Silver Screen Standards column. You can read all of Jennifer’s Silver Screen Standards articles here.

Jennifer is a former college professor with a PhD in English Literature and a lifelong obsession with film. She writes about classic movies at her blog, Virtual Virago, and presents classic film programs for lifetime learning groups and retirement communities. She’s the author of Beyond Casablanca: 100 Classic Movies Worth Watching and its sequel, Beyond Casablanca II: 101 Classic Movies Worth Watching, and she is also the co-editor of two books about the works of Jim Henson.

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Classic Movie Travels: Vera-Ellen

Posted on March 31, 2026 by Annette Bochenek

Classic Movie Travels: Vera-Ellen

Vera-Ellen
Vera-Ellen

Vera-Ellen was born Vera-Ellen Rohe on February 16, 1921, in Norwood, Ohio, to Alma Westemeier and Martin Rohe. Her father worked as a piano tuner. Both parents were of German descent.

Her mother wished to one day have a girl named Vera-Ellen, insisting that the hyphen be included in the name.

Rohe began dancing by the age of 10, attending dance classes at the Hessler Studio of Dancing in Cincinnati, Ohio, alongside fellow Ohioan, Doris Day—then still Doris Kappelhoff. The girls would often carpool together. At the age of 13, she placed as a winner on the Major Bowes Amateur Hour, soon initiating her professional career.

Vera-Ellen young

Vera-Ellen dropped her last name and was billed solely by her hyphenated first name when she made her Broadway debut in 1939 in the Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein musical Very Warm for May. She was also among the youngest Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall. These experiences soon led to more Broadway roles, including participating in productions of Panama Hattie, By Jupiter, and A Connecticut Yankee.

Vera-Ellen married fellow dancer, Robert Hightower, in 1941. They divorced in 1946.

While performing in A Connecticut Yankee, she was noticed by producer Sam Goldwyn. He ultimately cast her opposite Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo in Wonder Man (1945). While her singing voice was dubbed in Wonder Man, her vocals can be heard in two songs on the Decca Broadway Original Cast Album of the 1943 revival of A Connecticut Yankee: “I Feel at Home with You” and “You Always Love the Same Girl.”

Vera-Ellen danced with Gene Kelly in Words and Music (1948) as well as On the Town (1949). She also performed in the final Marx Brothers film, Love Happy (1949). Vera-Ellen worked alongside Fred Astaire in Three Little Words (1950) and The Belle of New York (1952). She co-starred with Donald O’Connor in Call Me Madam (1953). Her penultimate film role was in White Christmas (1954), co-starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, and Rosemary Clooney. Her final film role was in Let’s Be Happy (1957).

Vera-Ellen MGM

Vera-Ellen married oilman Victor Bennet Rothschild in 1954. In 1963, she gave birth to a daughter, Victoria Ellen, who passed away at just three months old from SIDS. The couple divorced in 1966.

In addition to her film roles, Vera-Ellen also made frequent guest appearances on television. Some of her final performances include her appearances on The Perry Como Show and The Dinah Shore Show, before retiring.

Vera-Ellen maintained a slim figure as she never discontinued her dance lessons and was an avid swimmer. Rumors of an eating disorder have not been proven and have been discredited by several of her friends and her niece by marriage.

Vera-Ellen passed away at the Los Angeles County General Hospital on August 30, 1981, from ovarian cancer. She was 60 years old. Her memorial service was held at Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary. She is at rest at Glen Haven Memorial Park in Sylmar, California, next to her daughter and parents.

Hessler School of Dance has since been converted into a private residence. The structure stands at 1033 Monastery St., Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hessler School of Dance
Hessler School of Dance

In 1930, she and her parents lived at 2218 Cathedral Ave., Norwood, Ohio. This home stands.

2218 Cathedral Ave., Norwood, Ohio
2218 Cathedral Ave., Norwood, Ohio

In 1941, she and Hightower lived at 37 W. 88th St., New York, New York. This also remains.

37 W. 88th St., New York, New York
37 W. 88th St., New York City

By 1945, she lived at 1414 E. 14th St., Long Beach, California, which also stands.

1414 E. 14th St., Long Beach, California
1414 E. 14th St., Long Beach, California

In 1950, she and her mother resided at 4557 Camellia Ave., North Hollywood, California, which stands.

4557 Camellia Ave., North Hollywood, California
4557 Camellia Ave., North Hollywood, California

In 1958, she, Rothschild, and her mother lived at 1451 Miller Way, Los Angeles, California, which stands.

She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, honoring her work in motion pictures. It is located at 7083 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, California.

Vera-Ellen Hollywood Walk of Fame star

[star]

Glen Haven Memorial Park is located at 13017 N. Lopez Canyon Rd., Sylmar, California.

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–Annette Bochenek for Classic Movie Hub

Annette Bochenek pens our monthly Classic Movie Travels column. You can read all of Annette’s Classic Movie Travel articles here.

Annette Bochenek, Ph.D., is a film historian, professor, and avid scholar of Hollywood’s Golden Age. She manages the “Hometowns to Hollywood” blog, in which she profiles her trips to the hometowns of classic Hollywood stars. She has also been featured on the popular classic film-oriented television network, Turner Classic Movies. A regular columnist for Classic Movie Hub, her articles have appeared in TCM Backlot, Silent Film Quarterly, Nostalgia Digest, The Dark Pages Film Noir Newsletter, and Chicago Art Deco Society Magazine.

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Western Roundup: Cowboy Museums

Posted on March 29, 2026 by Laura Grieve

Cowboy Museums

Over the last few months two prominent Southern California museums have featured exhibits on cowboys.

To varying degrees, the exhibits included memorabilia about Western movies and movie cowboys.  In this month’s column I’ll be sharing photos from my visits.

Autry Museum

In December I visited the Autry Museum of the American West, which some readers may recall from photos I shared here in a 2019 column.  The museum has just concluded hosting a traveling exhibit, Black Cowboys: An American Story, for the past six months. 

Black Cowboys Exhibit 1

This was a very interesting, informative exhibit about the history of black cowboys throughout the United States. Here I’m focusing solely on a small section of the exhibit featuring “B” movie Western star Herb Jeffries. Jeffries was also sometimes billed as Herbert Jeffrey.

Black Cowboys Exhibit 2

Jeffries, of mixed-race ancestry, chose to reflect his black heritage by portraying a black cowboy in a series of Westerns beginning with Harlem on the Prairie (1937). Jeffries, an accomplished singer, specifically created his musical cowboy persona to acknowledge the history of black cowboys and provide a role model for children. 

The Autry exhibit shared a poster for Jeffries’ The Bronze Buckaroo (1939) alongside another poster for a Western with an all-black cast, Black Gold (1928).

Autry Herb Jeffries Posters 1
Autry Herb Jeffries Poster 2

Although I sadly neglected to take a close-up photo, Jeffries’ own boots and holster were also on display, seen to the left of this wide shot.  The boots were worn in Harlem on the Prairie (1937).

Herb Jeffries Boots Harlem on the Prairie

I haven’t yet seen any of Jeffries’ Westerns yet, but I intend to do so in the future! He’s immortalized on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which by chance I saw the same day as this exhibit.  His remains are interred in a columbarium with a lovely marker at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Herb Jeffries WOF
Herb Jeffries Hollywood Forever

Black Cowboys: An American Story is currently on exhibit at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum in Michigan through July 2026.

Cowboys Exhibit Sign

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum has also been hosting a six-month exhibit, Cowboys: History & Hollywood.

Reagan Library Sign
Reagan Ticket

Ronald Reagan himself starred in a small handful of Westerns during his movie career, including Law and Order (1953), Cattle Queen of Montana (1954), and Tennessee’s Partner (1955).

Reagan Entrance Statue

Cowboys: History & Hollywood was an extensive exhibit spread across several rooms.  As the title implies, it chronicled the history of “real” cowboys alongside movie cowboys, which is my focus here.

Cowboys Exhibit Entrance

In a nice bit of serendipity, the Reagan Library exhibit showcased a different Herb Jeffries poster, for Harlem Rides the Range (1939).

Reagan Herb Jeffries Poster

It also featured a Gene Autry guitar, a nice coincidence given that this column began with a visit to the Autry Museum!  A lunchbox from the Autry-produced Annie Oakley TV series, which starred Gail Davis, can be spotted in the background.

Gene Autry Guitar

The Reagan Library exhibit also featured a poster for Gene Autry in Blue Montana Skies (1939).

Autry Poster at Reagan

Visitors of a certain age, who grew up watching Roy Rogers movies or TV shows, were moved (and perhaps a bit startled!) to see Trigger, Buttermilk, and Bullet alongside original Roy Rogers and Dale Evans costumes.

Roy Dale Exhibit

There were also some striking foreign Tom Mix posters.

Tom Mix Foreign Poster 1
Tom Mix Foreign Poster 2

A Winchester ’73 (1950) poster was side by side with a poster for a Winchester rifle search done to publicize the film.

Winchester 73 Poster
Winchester 73 Publicity

There were also some actual Winchester rifles!

Winchesters

The many posters on display also included Decision at Sundown (1957), starring Randolph Scott, and the all-star How the West Was Won (1962).

Decision at Sundown Poster
How the West Was Won Poster

There were props from Tombstone (1993), a film I wrote about here three years ago.

Tombstone Props

Numerous costumes on display included Clint Eastwood costumes from Pale Rider (1992), below left, and Unforgiven (1992), seen on the right.

Clint Eastwood Pale Rider
Clint Eastwood Unforgiven

My very favorite thing in the exhibit was John Wayne’s battered hat from Hondo (1953), a film I love which I wrote about here in 2018, in a column on favorite John Wayne leading ladies, and in 2024, in a post on Westerns for young viewers.

Hondo John Wayne Hat
Hondo Hat Closeup

I hope readers have enjoyed a “virtual tour” of these terrific exhibits!

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– Laura Grieve for Classic Movie Hub

Laura can be found at her blog, Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings, where she’s been writing about movies since 2005, and on Twitter at @LaurasMiscMovie. A lifelong film fan, Laura loves the classics including Disney, Film Noir, Musicals, and Westerns.  She regularly covers Southern California classic film festivals.  Laura will scribe on all things western at the ‘Western RoundUp’ for CMH.

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Silents are Golden: Buster Keaton’s Motion Picture Debut: The First Five Films

Posted on March 24, 2026 by Lea Stans

Buster Keaton’s Motion Picture Debut: The First Five Films

Buster Keaton, the butcher boy, 1917

From our 21st century perspective, Buster Keaton’s upbringing was certainly unusual. Born to parents who made a modest living performing in travelling medicine shows, he became a performer himself at a very young age. Arguably a child prodigy with exceptional comedic and acrobatic skills, he soon became the highlight of the family act. In time the Keatons were able to work their way to the vaudeville stage as “The Three Keatons,” specializing in slapstick comedy. The family act became so well known that none other than William Randolph Hearst offered to star them in a film series based on the comic strip Bringing Up Father. This being an era when motion pictures were considered beneath the stage, Buster’s father Joe indignantly turned the offer down: “You want to show The Three Keatons on a bedsheet for ten cents?”

The Three Keatons performed in countless theaters across America until disbanding in 1917. Looking for a fresh start, the 21-year-old Buster signed up to perform with the prestigious revue The Passing Show of 1917 in New York City. While waiting for rehearsals to begin, he was invited to tour comedian Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle’s nearby movie studio where a series of comedy shorts was about to start production. Already fascinated by cinema prior to his visit, Buster decided he wanted to leave the stage and “cast my lot with the pictures.”

The Butcher Boy (1917)

Buster Keaton the butcher boy 2
The Butcher Boy

Buster’s very first film appearance was in The Butcher Boy (1917), Roscoe Arbuckle’s first independent two-reeler. Arbuckle had been a popular performer and director for Mack Sennett for years before going solo in 1917, bringing along fellow Sennett performers like rubber-limbed nephew Al St. John and former prop man Joe Bordeaux to his new “Comique” studio. A generous soul and a patient mentor, Arbuckle had seen the Three Keatons act in the past and was happy to have the talented Buster onboard, allowing him to come up with funny “bits of business” for the screen.

The Butcher Boy is set in a small-town general store where Roscoe works behind the counter. For Buster’s entrance, he’s shown walking into the frame with his back to the camera and examining a barrel full of brooms. Picking up one of the brooms, he then turns and faces the camera. Since The Three Keatons frequently used brooms in their act as slapstick tools, this was probably to help audiences recognize him from the stage. Dressed in overalls and slapshoes, he also sports his familiar little porkpie hat. He and Roscoe then share a simple, but expertly-timed scene involving mishaps with a bucket of molasses. The film also gave Buster multiple opportunities to do impressive pratfalls, the first involving a bag of flour straight to the face.

The Rough House (1917)

Buster Keaton (r) and Al St. John in The Rough House (1917)
Buster Keaton (r) and Al St. John in The Rough House

Buster’s second film appearance was in Arbuckle’s second Comique The Rough House (1917), which packed in even more slapstick mayhem than The Butcher Boy. Arbuckle’s shown enduring a prickly relationship with his domineering mother-in-law, while the cook Al St. John picks a fight with delivery boy Buster over the hand of the pretty household maid. Soon the fight spills out of the kitchen and throughout the house, destroying the dining room. The second half of the film shows Roscoe having to wait on guests–the staff naturally having been fired–and the cops being called after some jewelry goes missing.

This short has a distinct Sennett film flavor, especially in the final sequence showing Al, Buster and Joe Bordeaux as cops racing to the rescue (the station was low on recruits). Supposedly this sequence used to be even longer, and showed the trio repeatedly emerging from the wrong subway stations. Like all the Comiques The Rough House is lively and thoroughly unpretentious, and gave Buster many opportunities to use his pratfalling skills, well-matched by Al. Their ferocious kitchen fight has been described as a slapstick ballet.

His Wedding Night (1917)

Buster Keaton, his wedding night, 1917
His Wedding Night

His Wedding Night is set in another small-town store: a pharmacy called Koff & Kramp where Roscoe works the front counter. Roscoe proposes to his sweetheart (played by the spunky Alice Mann) and angers his romantic rival Al St. John. Al hatches a wild plan to kidnap Alice and force her into marriage. Buster pops up as another delivery boy character, this time to deliver Alice’s wedding dress. Alice excitedly asks Buster to model the dress for her, and this being a silent comedy short and all, he cheerfully obliges. Al’s dastardly plan is put into motion, but he doesn’t realize that the “girl” he just kidnapped was actually Buster in drag.

By now Buster was hitting his stride as a series regular, and certainly seems to have contributed some ideas, such as having a folding screen drop down dramatically to reveal him modeling the wedding dress. He hams it up delightfully, smiling onscreen several times (yes, you’ll notice that he smiles in all the Comiques), and looking completely at ease in the surreal world of silent comedy–a world where the villain seemingly can’t hear Buster’s voice when he finds himself getting kidnapped!

4. Oh, Doctor! (1917)

Buster Keaton (r) and Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle in Oh Doctor! (1917)
Buster Keaton (r) and Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle in Oh Doctor!

This fourth Comique short was a decided change of pace and a bit more plot-heavy. Roscoe plays the well-to-do Dr. I. O. Dine who takes his wife and pampered young son to the horse races. A smartly-dressed Al shows up at the track with his vamp-ish, attractive wife, and Roscoe secretly strikes up a flirtation with her. Both Roscoe and Al lose all their money betting on a losing horse. Trying to cover their loss, Al and his wife hatch a plot to steal jewelry from the wealthy Roscoe. And of course, this risky plan goes awry.

Buster has the unusual role of playing Roscoe’s bratty son, laughing and bawling and getting constantly smacked around by the old man. The histrionics can seem pretty startling to fans used to his subtle, straight-faced persona of the 1920s.

5. Coney Island (1917)

Buster Keaton and Agnes Neilson, coney island, 1917
Buster Keaton and Agnes Neilson in Coney Island

This is the short where Buster (and yes, that’s him laughing in the above photo!) truly feels like an essential cog in the Comique machinery. A breezy short with a relaxed feel, Coney Island simply follows the adventures of Roscoe, Al and Buster at the famous amusement park. Buster loses his girl Alice Mann to rival Al St. John and decides to pursue them in the park, while at the same time Roscoe sneaks away from his nagging wife to have a high ol’ time. One thing leads to another and soon Roscoe, Al and Buster are all rivals for the hand of the fickle Alice.

The actors play off each other’s skills well and share equal amounts of screentime, and as a bonus we get to enjoy footage of a sunny Edwardian-era Coney Island and Luna Park. Buster does a standing backflip at one point, just because he can. With such a creative training ground and such good-natured talent all around him, it’s not hard to see why he was happy with his decision to leave the stage for motion pictures–and never look back.

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–Lea Stans for Classic Movie Hub

You can read all of Lea’s Silents are Golden articles here.

Lea Stans is a born-and-raised Minnesotan with a degree in English and an obsessive interest in the silent film era (which she largely blames on Buster Keaton). In addition to blogging about her passion at her site Silent-ology, she is a columnist for the Silent Film Quarterly and has also written for The Keaton Chronicle.

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Noir Nook: Ripped from the Headlines – Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Posted on March 19, 2026 by Karen Burroughs Hannsberry

Noir Nook: Ripped from the Headlines
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Shadow of a Doubt poster

If you know your Alfred Hitchcock, you might be aware that of all the movies he directed between 1925 and 1976, he considered his favorite to be Shadow of a Doubt (1943), starring Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten. What you might not know is that the murderer at the center of the film was inspired by real-life serial killer Earle (some spell it “Earl”) Nelson, who embarked on a crime spree during the 1920s that started in Philadelphia and wound up in Winnipeg, Canada.

Shadow of a Doubt, Joseph Cotten

Shadow of a Doubt focuses on Charlotte “Charlie” Newton (Wright), whose humdrum life gets more of a jolt that she bargained for in the form of her beloved uncle and namesake, Charles (Cotten). Charlie is delighted when her relative pays an unexpected visit to her hometown of Santa Rosa, California, and she’s not alone – his charms have the town’s female population clinging to him like Saran Wrap to a lemon meringue pie. Still, before long, red flags start popping up and swiping at Charles’s stellar image, beginning with the ruby ring he gives to Charlie – which bears someone else’s initials. As the days pass and the flags further unfurl, Charlie is forced to admit that there’s far more to her uncle than meets the eye – like, a penchant for MURDER.

Shadow of a Doubt, Joseph Cotten and Teresa Wright

And speaking of murder, the inspiration for the deadly Uncle Charles – Earle Nelson – kicked off his career in crime in the fall of 1925, when he was almost 30 years old; in the span of less than a month, he left the bodies of three middle-aged women in his wake. From Philadelphia, Nelson worked his way from coast to coast, attacking and killing a total of 24 women and one child in Chicago, San Francisco, Baltimore, Oakland, and Buffalo before making his way to Canada, where he was finally captured nearly two years later.

Ripped From the Headlines, Earle Nelson in police custody

The Hitchcock film fleshes out the story of Charles Newton to include his relationships with his niece, his sister (Patricia Collinge), and other family members; one of the added storylines focuses on Charlie’s father (Henry Travers) and his best friend (Hume Cronyn, in his screen debut), who wile away their hours together by pondering the perfect murder. But Charles Newton and his real-life counterpart have several important qualities in common. First off, when Earle Nelson was 10 years old, he ran into a streetcar while riding his bicycle – the accident left him with a hole in his temple, and he was unconscious for six days. Afterwards, he suffered from frequent headaches and memory lapses, and displayed odd behaviors, like talking to invisible people and impulsively quoting verses from the Bible. Nelson’s screen counterpart was involved in a similar accident, crashing into a streetcar while on his bicycle and fracturing his skull. His sister, Emma, recalled that before the accident, Charles was a quiet boy with an affinity for books, but after his lengthy recovery, he became boisterous and full of mischief: “He didn’t do much reading after that, let me tell you,” Emma said.

Another significant likeness between Earle Nelson and Charles Newton focuses on their murderous modus operandi. Nelson zeroed in on houses that displayed a “Rooms for Rent” sign and carried out his deadly deeds after gaining access as a potential tenant. And although Newton spends most of the movie with his family in Santa Rosa, the establishing shot in his first scene shows that he is residing in a house that rents rooms. Finally, both Nelson and Newton had a nickname based on their criminal deeds; Nelson was known as “The Gorilla Strangler” (among others), and Newton was “The Merry Widow Killer.”

shadow of a doubt family at table

Shadow of a Doubt started from a nine-page treatment called “Uncle Charlie,” by novelist Gordon McDonell. The idea first came to McDonnell when his car broke down near the small town of Hanford, California, during a vacation to the Sierra Nevada mountains. McDonnell’s wife, Margaret – who worked as head of the story department for producer David O. Selznick – told Hitchcock about her husband’s idea, and McDonnell pitched it to the director over lunch at the famed Brown Derby restaurant. After McDonnell submitted his treatment to Hitchcock, the director reached out to Thornton Wilder – Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Our Town – and he and Hitchcock worked on scouting locations and building the story into a screenplay. Other collaborators on the film’s script were Hitchcock’s wife, Alma Reville; and Sally Benson, perhaps best known for writing the young adult book, Junior Miss.

Shadow of a Doubt poster, Teresa Wright and Alfred Hitchcock

Incidentally, both Earle Nelson and Charles Newton met with an untimely end – Nelson was hanged after he was found guilty by a jury that deliberated for less than an hour. And Uncle Charlie . . .

Well – in case you haven’t seen the movie, I’ll leave you to discover Uncle Charlie’s demise on your own.

Stay tuned for my next look at a film noir Ripped from the Headlines!

…

– Karen Burroughs Hannsberry for Classic Movie Hub

You can read all of Karen’s Noir Nook articles here.

Karen Burroughs Hannsberry is the author of the Shadows and Satin blog, which focuses on movies and performers from the film noir and pre-Code eras, and the editor-in-chief of The Dark Pages, a bimonthly newsletter devoted to all things film noir. Karen is also the author of two books on film noir – Femme Noir: The Bad Girls of Film and Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir. You can follow Karen on Twitter at @TheDarkPages.
If you’re interested in learning more about Karen’s books, you can read more about them on amazon here:

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