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Vanity Street.Broke and homeless, a young woman hurls a brick through the window of a drugstore, hoping to go to jail because at least “they feed you there.” Instead of arresting her, a kindly cop gets her a job as a showgirl at the theater next door; soon she’s wearing furs and fending off passes from top-hatted stage-door Johnnies. So it goes in lightning-paced B movies such as Vanity Street (1932), directed by Poverty Row maestro Nick Grinde. The plot may be flimsy, but Max Ophuls could have been proud of the long, breezy tracking shot that glides past the windows of the drugstore, packed with a motley crowd of chorus girls, costumed actors, and burlesque comedians. This casually terrific sequence is representative of the treasures that were to be found in the retrospective honoring the 2024 centenary of Columbia Pictures at this year’s Locarno Film Festival. Most of the films were short.

Frank Capra was a three-time Oscar winner who dominated the box office throughout the 1930s with his populist fables, nicknamed “Capra-corn.” Yet how many of these titles remain classics? Let’s take a look back at 12 of Capra’s greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1897 in Siciliy, Italy, Capra came to the United States with his family in 1903. His work often reflected an idealized vision of the American dream, perhaps spurned by his own experiences as an immigrant. Depression-era audiences lapped up his sweetly sentimental screwball comedies, which often centered on the plight of the common man.

He earned his first Oscar nomination for directing “Lady for a Day” (1933), and his loss was infamously embarrassing: when presented Will Rogers opened the envelope, he said, “Come up and get it, Frank!” Capra bounded to the stage, only to learned that Frank Lloyd (“Cavalcade”) has won instead.

No matter, because...

Every filmmaker and actor, and literally every other person somehow related to the world of cinema is getting extremely nervous when the Oscars season comes around. While there are definitely several movies that are considered to be chosen as best pictures in advance, still the hope is something that can’t be taken away from anybody.

Winning an Academy Award is very prestigious and is literally the highest honor for work done in the movie industry. But can you imagine the happiness and overall excitement that an Oscar sweep can bring to a team?

Winning 5 major nominations is probably every creative team's dream, but there were only three films that managed to make the dream come true. Let's take a look at the movies that took home Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay all at once.

It Happened One Night (1934)

Frank Capra's film was the one that,...

“It Happened One Night,” which premiered at Radio City Music Hall on Feb. 22, 1934, helped usher in the screwball romantic comedy, changed the careers of stars Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, director Frank Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin and transformed the Poverty Row Columbia Pictures into a major player. And let’s not forget, “It Happened One Night” also made Oscar history winning five major Oscars: picture, director, adapted screenplay and both actor and actress. It would be 41 years before “One Flew of the Cuckoo’s Nest” would accomplish the same feat at the Academy Awards.

Based on the short story “Night Bus,” the smart, endearing road movie focuses on spoiled rotten Ellie Andrews (Colbert) who has gone against her wealthy father’s (Walter Connelly) wishes by marrying the gold-digging King Westley (Jameson Thomas). Before their wedding night, her father whisked her away to his yacht in Florida. She manages to...

Indie producer Harry Cohn, brother Jack and their associate Joe Brandt created the CBC Film Sales Company in 1918. And on Jan. 10, 1924, the trio formed the Poverty Row studio, Columbia Pictures. According to Enclyclopedia.com, by the mid-20s “Cohn had gained reputation as one of the industry’s toughest businessmen.” That’s putting it mildly.

Though “B” movies and series such as The Three Stooges, “Blondie” and “The Lone Wolf” were the bread and butter of the studio, Cohn slowly attracted top talent and directors and turned such newcomers as Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, William Holden and Kim Novak into stars.

Frank Capra changed the fortunes of the studio. Signing with Columbia in 1928, he made 25 films for Columbia. His optimistic, common man movies attracted critics and audiences alike during the Depression. His 1934 screwball comedy “It Happened One Night,” penned by Robert Riskin and starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, swept the Oscars winning five.

Oscar-winning actor Clark Gable earned the name of “The King of Hollywood” thanks to his expansive career that spanned more than three decades and several genres. He wasn’t shy when it came to winning an award, but he also had a refreshingly unique take on the meaning behind such an accomplishment. Gable gave away the only Oscar he ever won to a child to teach them a lesson.

Clark Gable won an Oscar for ‘It Happened One Night’ Clark Gable | Getty Images

Gable won his first, and only, Oscar for the romantic comedy called It Happened One Night. The Frank Capra-directed film hit theaters in 1934, which was written by Robert Riskin based on Samuel Hopkins Adams’ short story.

The story follows a spoiled young woman named Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert), who suddenly marries a sketchy King Westley. In response, her father (Walter Connolly) sends her away on his yacht,...

A relic from the Golden Age of Hollywood was found in the unlikeliest of places this weekend, as a special Oscar given for the 1935 Clark Gable classic “It Happened One Night” was placed in a donation box to a food pantry in Covington, Kentucky.

Cincinnati newspaper CityBeat reported that the Oscar was included in a box for Be Concerned, a community food pantry that also operates a thrift shop. The organization’s executive director Andy Brunsman said that they received the award this past summer and have had it sitting on their shelves for sale seemingly unnoticed.

“Some generous donor rang the back doorbell, gave us a box of what we like to call treasures – could be junk, could be good stuff. We didn’t really know what [the statuette] was, so it went up with the trinkets and knick-knacks on the shelf for a bit,” he said.

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Academy CEO...

Deliriously wry and so perfectly balanced it should become a case study in script classes, “Riders of Justice” may be the film that finally gives Anders Thomas Jensen international recognition beyond his usual spotlight as a sought-after screenwriter. Comparisons with the Coen brothers will be inevitable given oddball characters whose fixations and genuine heart contrast with moments of extreme violence, yet the roots of this black revenge comedy go back even further, bringing an asocial spin to classic screwballers where a group of quirky misfits are balanced out by a lone woman who’s the most put-together and in touch of the bunch.

Jensen works with his customary stable of actors, many of whom have appeared in his previous four features including Mads Mikkelsen, the most globally recognized of the group and currently enjoying quite a year between this and “Another Round.” Box office in Denmark was predictably high for...

An underrated Adam Sandler movie, Mr. Deeds, has been in the Netflix Top 10 most-watched films list for almost a full week now, proving that subscribers just can’t get enough of the actor, even if it’s via digging through his back catalogue.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the pic, Mr. Deeds follows a benevolent small-town guy who inherits a major stake in a corrupt and evil media conglomerate. At first, his rural morality clashes with the urban values of his fellow businessmen. Slowly but surely, however, Sandler’s character changes the company’s work culture for the better.

The film, which first released in 2002, was directed by Steven Brill and based a script by Robert Riskin, which was in turn based on a short story written by Clarence Budington Kelland. The basic plot should be familiar to all, as country mouse versus city cat remains one of the oldest,...

For producer-director John Ford Columbia Studios was apparently a calm port in a hostile movie climate. Away from the bankability guaranteed by John Wayne, Ford never quite regained the power of his earlier triumphs, from the silent era to his socially conscious classics at Fox. The four Columbia-controlled pictures presented on Powerhouse Indicator’s lavishly appointed disc set consist of two winners and (for this viewer) a pair of odd ducks. But the quality of his filmmaking remained consistent.

John Ford at Columbia 1935-1958

The Whole Town’s Talking, The Long Gray Line, Gideon’s Day, The Last Hurrah

Region B Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1935-1958 / Color & B&w / 1:37 Academy, 2:55 widescreen, 1:85 widescreen / / Street Date April 27, 2020 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £ 42.99

Starring: Edward G. Robinson, Jean Arthur; Tyrone Power, Maureen O’Hara; Jack Hawkins, Anna Massey; Spencer Tracy, Jeffrey Hunter.

Cinematography: Joseph August; Charles Lawton Jr., Charles Lang; Frederick A.

Frank Capra would’ve celebrated his 122nd birthday on May 18, 2019. The three-time Oscar winner dominated the box office throughout the 1930s with his populist fables, nicknamed “Capra-corn.” Yet how many of these titles remain classics? In honor of his birthday, take a look back at 12 of Capra’s greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1897 in Siciliy, Italy, Capra came to the United States with his family in 1903. His work often reflected an idealized vision of the American dream, perhaps spurned by his own experiences as an immigrant. Depression-era audiences lapped up his sweetly sentimental screwball comedies, which often centered on the plight of the common man.

SEEOscar Best Director Gallery: Every Winner In Academy Award History

He earned his first Oscar nomination for directing “Lady for a Day” (1933), and his loss was infamously embarrassing: when presented Will Rogers opened the envelope, he said, “Come up and get it,...

The Whole Town’s Talking

Blu ray

Twilight Time

1935 / 1:33:1 / 92 Min. / Street Date – March 26, 2019

Starring Edward G. Robinson, Jean Arthur

Written by Jo Swerling, Robert Riskin

Cinematography by Joseph H. August

Directed by John Ford

Overworked, under-appreciated and ever optimistic, Arthur Jones’ humdrum existence takes a turn for the weird when he returns home to find a stranger lurking in the shadows. Stranger still, the intruder is… Jones himself. Is this The Twilight Zone or a rough draft from Dostoevsky? No, it’s John Ford’s disquieting comedy from 1935, The Whole Town’s Talking.

Edward G. Robinson plays the mild-mannered paper pusher who bears more than a passing resemblance to a vicious mob boss named “Killer” Mannion. Once his co-workers note the uncanny likeness it’s all downhill – the delirious clerk is dragged to the police station for a brutal interrogation followed by that late night confrontation with the gangster himself.

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Bam

The largest-ever Us retrospective of one of our greatest filmmakers is underway with “Claire Denis: Strange Desire.”

Museum of the Moving Image

Three Mike Leigh masterworks screen this weekend.

La meilleur cochon, Miss Piggy, gets her highlight reel on Saturday.

Metrograph

Hopefully with a shower close at hand, the Harmony Korine retrospective continues, while...

There have been at least four major “King Kong” movies — and another, “Godzilla vs. Kong,” is due early next year. And yet when fans of all ages think of the girl in the palm of the ape’s hand, they think not of Jessica Lange or Naomi Watts, but of the actress who first embodied her in 1933.

As we speak, New York’s popular indie house Film Forum is filling the next two weeks with movies that starred Fay Wray, the original Ann Darrow who tamed the giant ape. Also featured are movies written by Wray’s husband, Academy Award winner Robert Riskin. The program is done in conjunction with a new memoir by Victoria Riskin, the couples’ daughter and former president of the Writers Guild of America West.

“They were an early Hollywood power couple, each with a lasting legacy,” TCM’s Ben Mankiewicz said. “Wray is more easily identifiable,...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Museum of the Moving Image

William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives plays this Sunday with a conversation to follow.

Wings of Desire screens again on Sunday.

La meilleur cochon, Miss Piggy, gets her highlight reel on Saturday.

Metrograph

Hopefully with a shower close at hand, the Harmony Korine retrospective commences.

Kent Jones...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Museum of the Moving Image

Two essential collaborations between Bruno Ganz and Wim Wenders can be seen.

In tribute to Jonas Mekas, Guns of the Trees screens this weekend.

Creature from the Black Lagoon plays in 3D on Saturday.

Metrograph

A young Björk proves the highlight of The Juniper Tree, a film absolutely worth your time.

Over the decades, the presenters and performers on the Academy Awards have become more diverse. And this year is no exception with Awkwafina, Whoopi Goldberg, Maya Rudolph, Amandla Stenberg, Tessa Thompson and Constance Wu already announced as presenting on the 91st annual Oscars, as well as Jennifer Hudson performing the Oscar-nominated tune “I’ll Fight” from “Rbg.”

But it was a long time coming. Let’s look back at the milestone first appearances of minority performers and presenters at Hollywood’s biggest night.

Though he was not a presenter per se, New Jersey native Cesar Romero of Cuban and Spanish heritage was featured with several writer/directors including Robert Riskin and John Huston who reminisced about their experiences in World War II at the 18th annual Academy Awards in 1946.

Puerto Rican-born Jose Ferrer, who earned a supporting actor nomination for 1948’s “Joan of Arc” appeared on the March 23, 1950 ceremony from...

Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga are aiming to be the eighth onscreen duo to win Best Actor and Best Actress Oscars. But they could join even more rarefied air if “A Star Is Born” also wins Best Picture, as only three films ever have swept those three categories.

All three films that have accomplished this just so happened to be the only three films to claim the Big Five awards as well: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and a screenplay award. The first film to do so was “It Happened One Night” (1934), which picked up statuettes for leads Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, director Frank Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin.

It’d be 41 years before it occurred again, achieved by “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), with victories for helmer Milos Forman, stars Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher, and screenwriters Laurence Hauben and Bo Goldman.

See...

This article marks Part 6, the final entry in the Gold Derby series reflecting on films that contended for the Big Five Oscars – Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay (Original or Adapted). With “A Star Is Born” this year on the cusp of joining this exclusive group of Oscar favorites, join us as we look back at the 43 extraordinary pictures that earned Academy Awards nominations in each of the Big Five categories, including the following three films that swept all of the top races.

At the 7th Academy Awards ceremony, Frank Capra’s romantic comedy “It Happened One Night” (1934) made Oscar history as the first film to triumph in all of the Big Five categories – Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Clark Gable), Best Actress (Claudette Colbert) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Robert Riskin). For each of these talents, it would hardly be their lone Oscar appearance.

Over the 90-years of Oscar history, seven films have scored wins in both Best Actor and Best Actress on the big night. This year could see, for the first time in more than two decades, an eighth join this exclusive group of Oscar favorites.

“A Star Is Born” proved the toast of the Telluride, Toronto and Venice Film Festivals, earning critical raves that favorably compared it to the three prior eponymous films, from 1937, 1954 and 1976. Stars Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga have been lauded for their turns in the film and now lead in Gold Derby’s odds in Best Actor and Best Actress.

With Fredric March and Janet Gaynor earning Oscar nominations for the 1937 original and James Mason and Judy Garland having garnered recognition for the 1954 musical remake, Cooper and Gaga are well-positioned to at least score nominations for the latest version. Should both prevail, “A Star Is Born” will...

Capra? Coppola? Bigelow? Our chief film critic crowns one of five nominees the Oscar of Oscars champion – and reveals who you picked as your winner

Catch up on the full list of nominees

After announcing the nominees last week, we begin our Oscar of Oscars all-time list with best director. In no other category has this choice been more painful, because, rightly or wrongly, the director is often seen as a film’s all-powerful creator: a film director’s authorial rights are even enshrined in EU law. The director liaises with the casting director and works with the actors, rehearsing them, shaping their performances. The director consults with the cinematographer, framing shots, and decides which take to use. The director makes decisions under pressure on set and on location about the look and feel of what is being shot. And of course the director accumulates prestige and respect — part of...

It’s a wonder movie from the 1930s, a political fantasy that imagines a Utopia of peace and kindness hidden away in a distant mountain range — or in our daydreams. Sony’s new restoration is indeed impressive. Ronald Colman is seduced by a vision of a non-sectarian Heaven on Earth, while Savant indulges his anti-Frank Capra grumblings in his admiring but hesitant review essay.

Lost Horizon (1937)

80th Anniversary Blu-ray + HD Digital

Sony

1937 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 133 min. / Street Date October 3, 2017 / 19.99

Starring: Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt, Edward Everett Horton, John Howard, Thomas Mitchell, Margo, Isabel Jewell, H.B. Warner, Sam Jaffe, Noble Johnson, Richard Loo.

Cinematography: Joseph Walker

Film Editors: Gene Havelick, Gene Milford

Art Direction: Stephen Goosson

Musical director: Max Steiner

Original Music: Dimitri Tiomkin

Written by Robert Riskin from the novel by James Hilton

Produced and Directed by Frank Capra

Frank Capra had a way with actors and comedy...

The retrospective Frank Capra, The American Dreamer is showing April 10 - May 31, 2017 in the United Kingdom.Frank CapraFrank Capra has fallen badly out of fashion in recent decades. While still well-known for the extraordinary Depression-era purple patch that produced It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), the critics have rarely been kind. His work is routinely derided as “Capra-corn” for its perceived sentimentality and “fairy tale” idealism while the man himself is written off in favour of contemporaries Howard Hawks, Preston Sturges and Ernst Lubitsch.Elliot Stein, writing in Sight & Sound in 1972, attacked Capra’s “fantasies of good will, which at no point conflict with middle-class American status quo values”, arguing that his “shrewdly commercial manipulative tracts” consist of little more than “philistine-populist notions and greeting-card sentiments”. Pauline Kael found him “softheaded,” Derek Malcolm a huckster hawking “cosily absurd fables.” To an extent,...

Stars: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly, Roscoe Karns, Jameson Thomas, Alan Hale, Arthur Hoyt, Blanche Friderici | Screenplay by Robert Riskin | Directed by Frank Capra

Spoiled but spirited socialite Ellie (Claudette Colbert) flees her privileged life commandeered by her overbearing father and ends up sharing a bus ride across America with cynical, hard-drinking newspaperman Peter (Clark Gable). If you think you know how that story ends you’re probably right, but audiences in 1934 wouldn’t have seen the inevitable romantic and comedic scenes coming; we may be used to the road-trip, odd-couple romance by now (it’s practically a subgenre all by itself), but It Happened One Night was the first of its kind.

Following a row aboard her father’s boat, Ellie dives into the harbour and enlists the help of an older woman so that she can buy a Greyhound bus ticket cross-country to Miami. The motivation behind...

“Can’T Buy Me Love”

By Raymond Benson

Frank Capra was a superstar Hollywood director in the 1930s. He had a string of critically-acclaimed and successful pictures after joining Columbia Pictures and elevating the studio from “poverty row” to a force that competed with the big leagues. Two of Capra’s Columbia movies won the Oscar for Best Picture, and Capra became the first filmmaker to win the Oscar for Best Director three times, all within five years. You Can’t Take it With You was Capra’s second Best Picture winner and his third Best Director achievement.

Sometimes his films have been called “Capra-corn,” because they are usually steeped in Americana, explore themes of social class inequality, feature casts of eccentric—but lovable—protagonists and greedy, heartless villains, and contain stories about the Everyman’s struggle against the Establishment. Capra was also one of the developers of the screwball comedy,...

Frank Capra won his third Best Directing Oscar for this Kaufman and Hart adaptation. Star Jean Arthur is radiant, and relative newcomer James Stewart seems to have lifted his 'aw shucks' nice-guy personal from his role. With Lionel Barrymore, Ann Miller, Dub Taylor, Spring Byington and a terrific Edward Arnold. You Can't Take It with You Blu-ray + Digital HD Sony Pictures Home Entertainment 1938 / B&W / 1:37 flat / 126 min. / Street Date December 8, 2015 / 19.99 Starring Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore, James Stewart, Edward Arnold, Mischa Auer, Ann Miller, Spring Byington, Samuel S. Hinds, Donald Meek, H.B. Warner, Halliwell Hobbes, Dub Taylor, Mary Forbes, Lillian Yarbo, Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson. Cinematography Joseph Walker Art Direction Stephen Goosson Film Editor Gene Havlick Original Music Dimitri Tiomkin Written by Robert Riskin from the play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart Produced and Directed by Frank Capra

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

One of Frank Capra's brightest, most entertaining features,...

Constance Cummings in 'Night After Night.' Constance Cummings: Working with Frank Capra and Mae West (See previous post: “Constance Cummings: Actress Went from Harold Lloyd to Eugene O'Neill.”) Back at Columbia, Harry Cohn didn't do a very good job at making Constance Cummings feel important. By the end of 1932, Columbia and its sweet ingenue found themselves in court, fighting bitterly over stipulations in her contract. According to the actress and lawyer's daughter, Columbia had failed to notify her that they were picking up her option. Therefore, she was a free agent, able to offer her services wherever she pleased. Harry Cohn felt otherwise, claiming that his contract player had waived such a notice. The battle would spill over into 1933. On the positive side, in addition to Movie Crazy 1932 provided Cummings with three other notable Hollywood movies: Washington Merry-Go-Round, American Madness, and Night After Night. 'Washington Merry-Go-Round...

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers

Written by Robert Rossen, Robert Riskin

Directed by Lewis Milestone

U.S.A., 1946

As a teenager, Martha Ivers (Janis Wilson) was a petulant rebel who regularly struck the ire of her caretaking aunt, a wicked woman prone to sucking the joy out of Martha’s life even though she offers the youngling a home in her plush Pennsylvania estate. One of the teen’s attempts to run away with street smart Sam Masterson (Darryl Hickman) changes the rest of her life in ways she could never have anticipated. Caught by the police once again and sent back home, Martha unleashes her frustrations on her aunt, murdering her in the process. The only witness to the killing is young Walter O’Neil (Mickey Kuhn), son of Martha’s tutor. Martha claims an intruder killed the vile old creature amidst a frantic escape. Flash forward years...

The above exchange from Frank Capra's romantic gem It Happened One Night doesn't necessarily give you any insight into the plot. Without the knowledge of what came before, or the visual of Claudet Colbert as spoiled sophisticate Ellie Andrews warily climbing into the car with the man she's traveled alongside from Florida to New York City, the joke probably doesn't pack much of an umph. But once you've seen this 1935 Best Picture winner as many times as I have, you never know which lines will jump out and make you laugh more than you previously did in the past. It Happened One Night is one of those wonderful Hollywood accidents. Neither Colbert nor her co-star, Clark Gable, were the first choices for the lead roles. In fact, it wasn't until Colbert won for Best Actress that she publicly thanked Capra for making the film (despite not even attending the Oscars,...

Jean Arthur films on TCM include three Frank Capra classics Five Jean Arthur films will be shown this evening, Monday, January 5, 2015, on Turner Classic Movies, including three directed by Frank Capra, the man who helped to turn Arthur into a major Hollywood star. They are the following: Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, You Can't Take It with You, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; George Stevens' The More the Merrier; and Frank Borzage's History Is Made at Night. One the most effective performers of the studio era, Jean Arthur -- whose film career began inauspiciously in 1923 -- was Columbia Pictures' biggest female star from the mid-'30s to the mid-'40s, when Rita Hayworth came to prominence and, coincidentally, Arthur's Columbia contract expired. Today, she's best known for her trio of films directed by Frank Capra, Columbia's top director of the 1930s. Jean Arthur-Frank Capra...

It Happened One Night

Directed by Frank Capra

Written by Robert Riskin

USA, 1934

When Frank Capra came upon the 1933 Samuel Hopkins Adams story “Night Bus,” he thought it would make a great film. He bought the property and took it to screenwriter Robert Riskin, with whom he had worked a few years prior on Platinum Blonde (1931). The script was set to be Capra’s next feature for Columbia, then a lower-rung studio where he was their preeminent director. The problem? Nobody wanted to make the film. Several top actors and actresses of the day turned down the picture, Robert Montgomery, Carole Lombard, and Myrna Loy among them. Clark Gable, not yet the caliber of star he would become, eventually accepted the male lead, and Claudette Colbert eventually (and reluctantly) took the female lead … under the condition that her $25,000 salary would be doubled, which it was. The film’s entire budget...

Turner Classic Movies (TCM) has added an exciting roster of screen legends and beloved titles to the 2014 TCM Classic Film Festival, including appearances by Maureen O’Hara, Mel Brooks and Margaret O’Brien, plus a two-film tribute to Academy Award®-winner Richard Dreyfuss. Marking its fifth year, the TCM Classic Film Festival will take place April 10-13, 2014, in Hollywood. The gathering will coincide with TCM’s 20th anniversary as a leading authority in classic film.

O’Hara will present the world premiere restoration of John Ford’s Oscar®-winning Best Picture How Green Was My Valley (1941), while Brooks will appear at a screening of his western comedy Blazing Saddles (1974). O’Brien will be on-hand for Vincente Minnelli’s perennial musical favorite Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), starring Judy Garland. The tribute to Dreyfuss will consist of a double feature of two of his most popular roles: his Oscar®-winning performance...

Tickets are currently on sale for a special screening of Frank Capra's 1933 film Lady for a Day at the Paramount. On hand to introduce the movie, and to talk more about classic films in general, will be film critic and historian Leonard Maltin. Maltin was one of the proponents for making this movie available on Blu-ray, and the event will include a rare 35mm projection of the classic, thanks to a loan from the Capra estate.

Lady for a Day is early Capra, made before he really burst on the scene with his big hit It Happened One Night. It's adapted from a Damon Runyon story by Robert Riskin, who continued to team up with Capra on many other movies in the 1930s and early 1940s.

The movie stars May Robson (whom I know best for her role as the daunting Aunt Elizabeth/Mrs. Carlton-Random in my favorite Bringing Up Baby) as Apple Annie,...

Fay Wray and John Monk Saunders, later film career [See previous article: "Fay Wray King Kong: Never a Superstar."] Robert Riskin died in 1955. Wray had been previously married (1928-1939) to writer and aviator John Monk Saunders, a Best Original Story Oscar winner for the aviation drama The Dawn Patrol (1930), and the writer of two Fay Wray movies: the aforementioned Legion of the Condemned and The Finger Points. An alcoholic who developed a serious drug problem during his marriage to Wray, Saunders committed suicide in 1940, the year after the couple’s separation became final. (Photo: Fay Wray and Jack Holt in Frank Capra’s [...]...

Few genres of film inspire more personal responses than the romantic comedy. Given how much of our lives is spent on love and romance (falling into it, falling out of it, chasing it, giving up on it), it's no surprise that the rom-com has remained one of the most popular formulas since the dawn of cinema, and while the genre has undisputed classics, you can end up cherishing certain films purely because of their connection to your own life. They can help pull you out of a post break-up tailspin, they can comfort you through unrequited love, and, if a film hits you at the height of your passion for someone, they can end up associated forever, even blinding you to the movie's flaws -- seeing "Elizabethtown" in the midst of first love left this writer swooning after exiting the theater (thankfully, a subsequent rewatch put me straight as to how terrible it is.

A year before It Happened One Night famously swept the Oscars, Frank Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin made Lady for a Day, which earned four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture—but because it was withheld from TV and 16mm distribution for years, it never attained the widespread awareness and residual affection that other Capra classics have always enjoyed. A new, beautifully restored DVD and Blu-ray from Inception Media—with a sequence that was missing from an earlier dvd release—may help to remedy that injustice. Oddly enough, it was Capra himself who pulled Lady for a Day from circulation, so that it wouldn’t be compared to his 1961 remake,...

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Throughout the month of December, TV Editor Kate Kulzick and Film Editor Ricky D will review classic Christmas adaptions, posting a total of 13 each, one a day, until the 25th of December.

The catch: They will swap roles as Rick will take on reviews of classic television Christmas specials and Kate will take on Christmas movies. Today is day 8.

Meet John Doe (1941)

Screenplay by Robert Riskin

Story by Richard Connell and Robert Presnell, Sr.

Directed by Frank Capra

What’s it about?

A journalist, Ann Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck) dreams up an article to save her job and winds up entangled with John Doe, her fictional creation, Long John Willoughby (Gary Cooper), the man hired to play him, and the men who seek to exploit them all.

How is it?

Capra’s Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life may have the holiday locked down, but this pleasing entry deserves a look as well.

Mostly a Paramount star, Claudette Colbert hasn't been a frequent presence on Turner Classic Movies — that is, apart from reruns of her relatively few movies at MGM, Warner Bros., and Rko. Unfortunately, TCM's "Summer Under the Stars" day dedicated to Colbert — Friday, August 12 — won't rectify that glaring cinematic omission. [Claudette Colbert Movie Schedule.] Despite the fact that dozens of Claudette Colbert movies remain unavailable — thanks to Universal, owner of the old Paramount movie library — TCM is only presenting one Colbert premiere, Ken Annakin's British-made 1952 drama The Planter's Wife / Outpost in Malaya, co-starring Jack Hawkins. Of course, one rarely seen movie is better than none, but still… Think The Wiser Sex, The Lady Lies, Manslaughter, Young Man of Manhattan, The Phantom President (in case it's lying in some vault somewhere), The Man from Yesterday, Misleading Lady, His Woman, Zaza, Secrets of a Secretary, I Met Him in Paris, Texas Lady, Practically Yours, Skylark, Private Worlds,...

Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (1936) Direction: Frank Capra Cast: Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, George Bancroft, Douglass Dumbrille, Lionel Stander, H. B. Warner, Ruth Donnelly, Raymond Walburn, Margaret Seddon, Margaret McWade Screenplay: Robert Riskin; from Clarence Budington Kelland "Opera Hat" Oscar Movies Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, Frank Capra By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica: There is a tendency among some to think that all the art produced by a great artist is great. This is false, but it gives cover for bad critics who just recycle old blurbs about said artist. Think of the fawning that goes on in discussions of Shakespeare. Although he could be a great writer, all but a dozen or so of his sonnets were mediocre tongue-twisters, and two-thirds of his thirty-seven known plays range from mediocre to terrible. In other words, by being uncritical one actually diminishes the great art that has been produced, for an uncritical...

Claudette Colbert, Clark Gable in Frank Capra's It Happened One Night It Happened One Night Review Part I It Happened One Night's well-known "Walls of Jericho" reference comes from a scene where Peter places a blanket across a rope to divide the room in which he and Ellie are staying. Frank Capra and Robert Riskin use it as a way to heighten the sexual provocations of the characters. In the Luke & Laura General Hospital wave of the early 1980s, those two characters copied numerous scenes from It Happened One Night; one of dozens of outright thefts and homages, though none had the wit found in Clark Gable's and Claudette Colbert's characters: "Well, I like privacy when I retire," Peter tells Ellie in their motel room. "Yes, I'm very delicate in that respect. Prying eyes annoy me. Behold the Walls of Jericho! Maybe not as thick as...

It Happened One Night (1934) Direction: Frank Capra Cast: Claudette Colbert, Clark Gable, Walter Connolly, Roscoe Karns Screenplay: Robert Riskin; from Samuel Hopkins Adams' short story "Night Bus" Oscar Movies Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, It Happened One Night By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica: It is a very rare thing when a light-hearted comedy, something that is quintessentially the stuff of a "good movie," breaches into that territory where the term "good film" can also be applied, but Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934), adapted by Capra's longtime collaborator Robert Riskin from Samuel Hopkins Adams' short story "Night Bus," may be such an exception. Today, most people know Capra solely for his rediscovered classic It's a Wonderful Life, made a dozen years later, but It Happened One Night was his first stab at what most critics would label greatness. The fact that the film is a comedy is all...

Jean Arthur, Gary Cooper, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town Gary Cooper is the "star of the evening" on Turner Classic Movies. Frank Capra's messy Meet John Doe, which can never quite decide where it stands socially and politically, is on right now. The movie is made watchable by Cooper's and, especially, Barbara Stanwyck's performances. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town could've been just as messy as Meet John Doe, but perhaps because Robert Riskin was responsible for the screenplay, the characters come to life in a more believable manner, even if the film's social message is as idealistically absurd as ever. Cooper co-stars with the delightful Jean Arthur in this one. Stuart Heisler's Along Came Jones is a so-so comic Western, watchable just because of its two leads (Cooper and Loretta Young), but you should check out William Wyler's Oscar-nominated, Civil War-set Friendly Persuasion. The film itself is problematic; in fact,...

It's appropriate that in this present depression there should be a National Film Theatre celebration of Frank Capra (1897-1991) and the re-release of six of the movies that established him as the greatest, or at least most celebrated, director of the 1930s Depression. Too often dismissed as an equivocal populist dispensing Capracorn in Roosevelt's New Deal era, he was a master film-maker, and these two newspaper pictures see him at his best. The little-known Forbidden (1932) is that rare oxymoron, a subtle melodrama, starring Barbara Stanwyck as a self-sacrificing woman torn between her married politician lover (father of her child) and a vengeful journalist husband.

It Happened One Night (1934), Capra's greatest film, is a combination of road movie and screwball comedy in which Clark Gable (down-to-earth reporter) accompanies Claudette Colbert (spoilt fugitive heiress travelling incognito) on a cheerful journey across depression America in the hope of getting a scoop. Roman Holiday is virtually a remake,...

Frank Capra's wonderful multi-Oscar-winning romantic comedy comes up as fresh as a daisy, writes Peter Bradshaw

As buoyant and elegant as bubbles in a glass of champagne, Frank Capra's sublime 1934 comedy, written by long-time collaborator Robert Riskin, survives triumphantly because of its wit, charm, romantic idealism and its shrewd sketch of married life. Clark Gable plays roguish newspaperman Peter Warne; he encounters Ellie Andrews, played by Claudette Colbert, on a night bus to New York. She's a haughty, gamine socialite on the run from her domineering millionaire father and, recognising her from a press photo, Warne offers a deal: he won't turn her in, if she will give him the exclusive story. So they travel together, sharing motel rooms by impersonating a quarrelling married couple – and both are secretly awed by how easily this imposture comes to them, and how miraculous is their feisty chemistry. Warne decorously hangs...

You Can’t Take It with You is a classic case of good old-fashioned American optimism, a celebration of family and small-town values courtesy of Frank Capra, who made a distinguished career out of such things. By the time of its release in 1938 films like It Happened One Night and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town had already made Capra a household name, a premiere chronicler of the Depression era national mood and a primary spokesman for cinema’s ability to serve as a tonic, spreading good cheer among audiences that had experienced too little of it. That history looms over every frame of what is one of the original quirky family dramedies, a direct ancestor of the entire genre of independent filmmaking devoted to such ventures today. It instills even the more banal, dated moments with particular resonance. One can sense in Capra’s joyful indulgence of the sheer chaotic nature of the life of the Sycamore...

Actress Fay Wray, best known for her role in 1933 movie King Kong, died on Sunday. She was 96. Born Vina Fay Wray in Alberta, Canada, on September 15, 1907, she was one of six children. Her family moved to the United States when she was three years old. Wray was barely in her teens when she began her silver-screen career as a extra. She went on to be regularly cast as a heroine in silent movies, scoring her breakthrough in 1928's The Wedding March. In the early 1930s she made a number of horror movies, including Doctor X and The Vampire Bat, and became known as Hollywood's first "scream queen". After those movies, Wray won praise for her King Kong character's combination of sex appeal, vulnerability and lung capacity as she was stalked by the beast to the top of New York's Empire State Building. But her career fell into decline following King Kong and she retired from movies in 1942 after her second marriage. In 1953, she made a comeback in character roles and made movies until 1958 and worked in television into the 1960s. Wray had a daughter, Susan, by her first marriage to John Monk Saunders, and two children, Robert and Vicky, with Robert Riskin.

Fay Wray, the stunning beauty who tamed the legendary beast in King Kong, died Sunday at her Manhattan home; she was 96. According to a close friend, director Rick McKay, Wray passed away quietly, "as if she was going to sleep." Canadian-born but raised in Los Angeles, the diminutive actress (her full name was the exotic Vina Fay Wray) appeared in a number of silent films in the 20s, including Erich Von Stroheim's The Wedding March, which showcased her beauty and brought her larger fame. Other notable films of the era included The Legend of the Condemned opposite Gary Cooper, Josef Von Sternberg's Thunderbolt (the director's first sound film), and The Four Feathers, which introduced her to Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Shoedsack, the team that would make King Kong. Though she made a startling 11 films in 1933, Wray will be remembered always and forever as Ann Darrow, an unemployed actress who takes a job in a movie filming on a strange island and finds herself the love object of a giant ape. Mixing sex appeal with vulnerability, and a pair of lungs that wouldn't quit, Wray established herself as the first "scream queen" and the iconic image of her held in Kong's giant fist (in actuality an eight-foot mechanical arm) became one of the most enduring and legendary images in cinema.

Alas, Wray's follow-up films were less than memorable, and she left the screen in 1942 to marry writer Robert Riskin (It Happened One Night). She made a return in the 50s in small roles, usually playing a teen ingenue's mother (as she did in Tammy and the Bachelor), but gave up moviemaking by the end of the decade and appeared sporadically on television through the 60s. Her last appearance was in the 1980 TV movie Gideon's Trumpet opposite Henry Fonda. In 1988 she published her autobiography, On the Other Hand, and was the guest of honor at the 1991 ceremony marking the 60th birthday of the Empire State Building; she wrote, "Each time I arrive in New York and see the skyline and the exquisite beauty of the Empire State Building, my heart beats a little faster. I like that feeling. I really like it!" Wray is survived by three children, including daughter Victoria Riskin. --Prepared by IMDb staff...

You don't have to be a fan of Frank Capra's 1936 classic comedy "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" to hate this Adam Sandler remake. But it does add insult to injury. Mired in juvenilia with only one acting performance worthy of mention, "Mr. Deeds" swiftly extinguishes the afterglow of Sandler's smashing Cannes debut last month with "Punch-Drunk Love". Returning aggressively to his formula of dimwitted comedy and even dimmer characters, Sandler, who also executive produces, has made a film that makes previous vehicles look smart and sassy.

Sandler's teen and preteen audience will, of course, turn up opening day. His films, no matter how gawky, tend to perform, so "Mr. Deeds" probably will enjoy boxoffice success. But with this effort, he appears to aim for an even younger demographic.

The essentials from the Capra movie remain: Longfellow Deeds (Sandler), a small-town hick who writes greeting card poetry, inherits an unexpected fortune. He comes to New York, where a female reporter (Winona Ryder) in disguise romances him while filing misleading news stories about the instant "playboy" that turn him into a laughing stock. Eventually, Deed's small-town virtues triumph over big-city cynicism and avarice.

But instead of Gary Cooper's Deeds, a simple man with a direct manner and touch of folk wisdom, Sandler's Deeds is merely a simpleton. And fellow residents of his small New England town of Mandrake Falls are no longer "pixilated" but raging morons. One more puzzling if not disturbing change is to give the otherwise sweet-natured Deeds a horrific temper and alarming propensity for violence. The mere thought that people in a swank restaurant are laughing at him causes Sandler to punch faces, throw bodies and destroy furniture, a carnage he dismisses by handing the maitre d' a wad of greenbacks. This is a small-town virtue?

Ryder has the Jean Arthur news-hen role. Even if she didn't suffer the misfortune of a line of dialogue about breaking her arm, this is an embarrassing performance. Line deliveries lack conviction as she seems truly miscast for Sandler's brand of comic infantilism. Indeed, cartoonish yet inconsistent work runs throughout the cast, relieved only by John Turturro's impressive comic turn as a quirky, Spanish-accented butler, who materializes and vanishes in an instant. The film features cameo appearances by John McEnroe and the Rev. Al Sharpton that are odd, to say the least.

The director of this film insists that it be billed as "a film by Steven Brill," and this is appropriate, for who else would want credit? Scenes are raggedly staged, sometimes without enough coverage for editor Jeff Gourson to piece them together coherently. Lighting is often overly bright and camera placements flat and uninteresting. Other technical credits are OK but lack imagination.

MR. DEEDS

Columbia Pictures

Columbia Pictures and New Line Cinema present a Happy Madison production in association with Out of the Blue Entertainment

Credits: Director: Steven Brill; Screenwriter: Tim Herlihy; Adapted from: the film "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town", written by Robert Riskin, and the story "Opera Hat", by Clarence Budington Kelland; Producers: Sid Ganis, Jack Giarraputo; Executive producers: Adam Sandler, Joseph M. Caracciolo; Director of photography: Peter Lyons Collister; Production designer: Perry Andelin Blake; Music: Teddy Castellucci; Co-producer: Alex Siskin; Costume designer: Ellen Lutter; Editor: Jeff Gourson. Cast: Longfellow Deeds: Adam Sandler; Babe Bennett: Winona Ryder; Emilio Lopez: John Turturro; Marty: Allen Covert; Chuck Cedar: Peter Gallagher; Mac McGrath: Jared Harris; Cecil Anderson: Erick Avari; Jan: Conchata Ferrell; Crazy Eyes: Steve Buscemi.

MPAA rating PG-13, running time 96 minutes.