screwball comedy | BEGUILING HOLLYWOOD

Okay, I lied about last night. I didn’t watch “All the President’s Men”

January 31, 2018 by Vickie Lester

I had a Preston Sturges film fest instead, and went to bed blissfully happy…movie magic…binge watching of the best kind 😉 . The Lady Eve… In which card shark Barbara Stanwyck tries to swindle bashful scientist (and heir to a fortune) Henry Fonda, and loses her heart. and The Palm Beach Story, a romantic screwball comedy with wit and verve and wonderful performances…

Categories: Art, Blogging, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, History, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Movies, Photography, Romance, Story, Theater, Uncategorized • Tags: Barbara Stanwyck, Claudette Colbert, Henry Fonda, Joel McCrea, Mary Astor, Preston Sturges, Rudy Vallée, scene from The Palm Beach Story, screwball comedy, The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story

Tell me about your cinematic chocolates…

April 16, 2016 by Vickie Lester

You know. The movies that make you curl up on the couch and purr. I’ll get it rolling. Trouble in Paradise Senses of Cinema calls it a Lost Treasure, and I have to agree. A man in a tuxedo stands poised upon a stone balcony, robed in silvery moonlight. A Venetian canal sparkles below. A waiter lingers expectantly behind him. From out of the darkness, a gondola appears, bearing a woman in a shimmering evening gown. She glances upward and […]

Categories: Art, Blogging, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, History, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Movies, Photography, Theater, Travel, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized • Tags: #CinematicChocolates, #itsinhiskissbyvickielester, Charlie Ruggles, Edward Everett Horton, Ernst Lubitsch, Herbert Marshall, Kay Francis, Lost Treasure, screwball comedy, Senses of Cinema, trouble in paradise starring Miriam Hopkins

“I don’t seem to get solemn about it, and some people might not understand. That’s why I never talk about it. I think it’s all here–in the mountains and the desert. I don’t think God is a softie, either. In the end, it’s better if people are forced back into–well–into being right, before they’re too far gone. I think your temple is your everyday living.” Carole Lombard

January 3, 2016 by Vickie Lester

Categories: Art, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Film, History, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Movies, Photography, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized • Tags: Carole Lombard, Carole Lombard quote, gable and lombard, I think your temple is your everyday living, screwball comedy, starlight

Gary Cooper in the bath, the Lubitsch touch…

July 23, 2015 by Vickie Lester

It’s supposed to be Louis the XIV’s, a gift to Claudette Colbert in the comedy Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, and of course it breaks like an eggshell around lanky Mr. Cooper. Funny how differently men are portrayed in the bath…

Categories: Blogging, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Film, History, Hollywood, Humor, Life, Los Angeles, Movies, Photography, Relationships, Story, Theater, Truth & Rumors • Tags: "Bluebeard's Eighth Wife", Classic Movies, Claudette Colbert, ClaudetteColbert, comedy, director, Ernst Lubitsch, fashion, film, Gary Cooper gif, Gary Cooper in the bath, history, Hollywood, humor, Lubitsch touch, Movie Star, no nudity, Old Hollywood, photography, screwball comedy

Thoughts on music in movies, I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, by George Kaplan

May 7, 2014 by Vickie Lester

BEGUILING MELODIES #1: I Can’t Give You Anything But Love – Lyrics by Dorothy Fielding, Music by Jimmy McHugh, as heard in Bringing Up Baby “It’s extraordinary how potent cheap music is.” Noel Coward’s Amanda speaks those words in Private Lives and wouldn’t it be difficult or even foolish to deny the truth of them? Although I, being modern (don’t *scoff*, that is RUDE! Tsk, tsk.), feel that no music which moves you in any way could be considered “cheap”. […]

Categories: Art, Blogging, Choreography, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, History, Hollywood, Humor, Life, London, Los Angeles, Movies, Music, Pets, Photography, Romance, Story, Theater, Travel, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: 1938, actor, actress, art deco, based on a story by Hagar Wilde, behind the scenes, BRINGING UP BABY, Bringing Up Baby gif, by George Kaplan, Cary Grant, cheer up, Classic Movies, creative dynamic, design, director, emotional memory, fashion, film, gay, ham, history, Hollywood, Howard Hawks, humor, Katharine Hepburn, leopard, Los Angeles, lyrics by Dorothy Fielding, movie history, Movie Star, movies, Music by Jimmy McHugh, Old Hollywood, on screen chemistry, on set, paleontologist, photography, practical jokes on set, rapport, screwball comedy

Thoughts on Bringing Up Baby (1938), by George Kaplan

May 7, 2014 by Vickie Lester

BEAUTIFUL BABY! A paleontologist with a missing bone; a crazily adorable heiress; a refrigerator-cold fiancee; two (that’s TWO!) leopards, one of which is wild, the other named Baby with a love and with a love for the song “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby”; “I’ll be with you in a minute, Mr Peabody!”; Cary Grant in a frilly negligee exclaiming “I just went GAY all of a sudden!”; Katharine Hepburn in a dress that rips up the back […]

Categories: Art, Blogging, Choreography, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, Friendship, History, Hollywood, Humor, Life, Los Angeles, Movies, Music, Pets, Photography, Romance, Story, Theater, Travel, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: 1938, actor, actress, art deco, based on a story by Hagar Wilde, behind the scenes, BRINGING UP BABY, by George Kaplan, Cary Grant, cheer up, Classic Movies, creative dynamic, design, director, fashion, film, gay, ham, history, Hollywood, Howard Hawks, humor, Katharine Hepburn, leopard, Los Angeles, movie history, Movie Star, movies, Old Hollywood, on screen chemistry, on set, paleontologist, photography, practical jokes on set, rapport, screwball comedy

Behind the scenes on Bringing Up Baby, with a mirror, ham, and Cary Grant…

May 7, 2014 by Vickie Lester

Categories: Art, Blogging, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, Friendship, History, Hollywood, Humor, Life, Los Angeles, Movies, Music, Pets, Photography, Romance, Story, Theater, Travel, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: 1938, actor, actress, art deco, based on a story by Hagar Wilde, behind the scenes, BRINGING UP BABY, by George Kaplan, Cary Grant, cheer up, Classic Movies, creative dynamic, design, director, fashion, film, gay, ham, history, Hollywood, Howard Hawks, humor, Katharine Hepburn, leopard, Los Angeles, movie history, Movie Star, movies, Old Hollywood, on screen chemistry, on set, paleontologist, photography, practical jokes on set, rapport, screwball comedy

I let Mr. Lester write the title of this post… tawdry Hollywood underground dirty secrets revealed… or not. Mostly not.

January 26, 2014 by Vickie Lester

I’ve been on a binge lately, watching comedies from the Seventies. That’s the decade I grew up in. Ten at the start, almost twenty by the time it was all over. I realized I’ve only seen the films once (in most cases) and I’ve decided to review them, in not anywhere near chronological order, starting with: WHAT’S UP, DOC? (1972) By the early seventies the screwball comedy had been dead for over three decades — despite various funny and not-so-funny […]

Categories: Blogging, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, History, Hollywood, Humor, Life, Los Angeles, Memoir, Movies, Music, Photography, Relationships, Story, Theater, Travel, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: Barbra Streisand, BRINGING UP BABY, Buck Henry, comedies of the 1970s, comedy, hilarious, Howard Hawks, humor, Looney Tunes, Madeline Kahn, mayhem, meet cute, oddly sexy, opposites attract, Peter Bogdanovich, Polly Platt, Ryan O'Neal, San Francisco, Screenplay by Buck Henry, screwball comedy, stud muffin, tawdry Hollywood secrets revealed...or not, The Graduate, What's Up Doc?

MINK AS A PLOT POINT – EASY LIVING (1937)

December 9, 2013 by Vickie Lester

Preston Sturges had signed a deal with Paramount in 1936, and Easy Living was his first assignment for them. Although putatively based on a story by Vera Caspary, Sturges in fact supposedly kept almost nothing of it except the mink coat. When a studio executive rejected the script because “1936 was not the time for comedies”, Sturges took the script directly to Mitchell Leisen, of which Sturges said “going to a director over the head of my producer was not […]

Categories: Architecture, Art, Blogging, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, History, Hollywood, Humor, Life, Literature, Los Angeles, Movies, Photography, Relationships, Story, Travel, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized • Tags: Classic Movies, Easy Living 1937, Edward Arnold, Jean Arthur, mink coat, Mitchell Leisen, Paramount, Preston Sturges, Ray Milland, screwball comedy

BEGUILING HOLLYWOOD

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Tag: screwball comedy

Okay, I lied about last night. I didn’t watch “All the President’s Men”

Tell me about your cinematic chocolates…

Gary Cooper in the bath, the Lubitsch touch…

Thoughts on music in movies, I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, by George Kaplan

Thoughts on Bringing Up Baby (1938), by George Kaplan

Behind the scenes on Bringing Up Baby, with a mirror, ham, and Cary Grant…

I let Mr. Lester write the title of this post… tawdry Hollywood underground dirty secrets revealed… or not. Mostly not.

MINK AS A PLOT POINT – EASY LIVING (1937)