News

Powerhouse Indicator’s first foray into the Universal library yields six noir thrillers, all crime-related and all different: the list introduces us to scheming businessmen, venal confidence crooks, black-market racketeers, a femme fatale, a gangster deportee and baby stealers. The B&w features are enriched with some of the best actors of the postwar years, and the titles themselves are a litany of vice and sin: The Web, Larceny, Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, Abandoned, Deported and Naked Alibi.

Universal Noir #1

Region B Blu-ray

The Web, Larceny, Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, Abandoned, Deported, Naked Alibi

Powerhouse Indicator

1948-1954 / B&w / Street Date November 14, 2022 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £49.99

Starring: Ella Raines, Edmond O’Brien, Vincent Price, William Bendix; John Payne, Joan Caulfield, Dan Duryea, Shelly Winters, Dorothy Hart; Joan Fontaine, Burt Lancaster, Robert Newton; Dennis O’Keefe, Gale Storm, Jeff Chandler, Raymond Burr; Marta Toren, Jeff Chandler, Marina Berti, Richard Rober; Sterling Hayden,...

Today’s noir forecast is vice, kidnapping, murder, suicide, narcotics and a sleazy stolen baby racket! Kino’s third volume of Universal-International pix contains two seldom-screened quality urban noirs. Expect genuine dark themes in these sizable-budget location noirs filmed before Universal pulled most production back onto its one-size-fits-all backlot sets. Barbara Stanwyck dominates one show, while noir stalwarts Richard Conte and Dennis O’Keefe anchor the other two dramas, with dynamic showings by Coleen Gray, Edith Barrett, Peggy Dow, Jeanette Nolan, Meg Randall and especially Gale Storm.

Film Noir the Dark Side of Cinema III

Abandoned, The Lady Gambles, The Sleeping City

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1949-50 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 79,99,86 min. / Street Date June 9, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 34.99

Starring: Dennis O’Keefe, Gale Storm, Jeff Chandler, Meg Randall, Raymond Burr, Marjorie Rambeau, Jeanette Nolan, Mike Mazurki, Will Kuluva, David Clarke; Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Preston, Stephen McNally, Edith Barrett, John Hoyt,...

The Wasteland:

Television is a gold goose that lays scrambled eggs;

and it is futile and probably fatal to beat it for not laying caviar.

Lee Loevinger

When people argue over the quality of television programming, both sides — it’s addictive crap v. underappreciated populist art — seem to forget one of the essentials about commercial TV. By definition, it is not a public service. It is not commercial TV’s job to enlighten, inform, educate, elevate, inspire, or offer insight. Frankly, it’s not even commercial TV’s job to entertain. Bottom line: its purpose is simply to deliver as many sets of eyes to advertisers as possible. As it happens, it tends to do this by offering various forms of entertainment, and occasionally by offering content that does enlighten, inform, etc., but a cynic would make the point that if TV could do the same job televising fish aimlessly swimming around an aquarium,...

If you’ve hunted around for movie bargains, you’ve probably seen some of Mill Creek Entertainment’s 50-Movie Packs on DVD. Apart from other great releases by Mill Creek, these packs are phenomenal boons to cinephiles looking to collect older titles.

There are three new packs available, and I want to not only let you in on a discount code, but I have one of the packs available for you to win.

I know a lot of people may be quick to overlook these packs, and not every movie included stands out as a major value, but there are some great titles in each of them, and fans of the genres will be pleasantly surprised by what they get out of the deal. I have to admit that there is something about seeing a 50-movie pack, especially when it doesn’t cost a couple of hundred dollars, or more,...

Joan Bennett, Spring Buyington, Frances Dee, Jean Parker, Katharine Hepburn in Little Women (top); Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck in Remember the Night (bottom) The digitally remastered Remember the Night (1940), written by Preston Sturges, directed by Mitchell Leisen, and starring Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, is the highlight of Turner Classic Movies‘ Christmas movie series this month. But there are other goodies — or potential goodies — as well. One such is It Happened on 5th Avenue (1947), a minor Allied Artists (ex-Monogram) comedy directed by former WB contractee Roy Del Ruth, and featuring Don DeFore, former Rko star Ann Harding, and Gale Storm. The story centers on a hobo and his buddies who take over a mansion while the [...]...

We had been told to expect the deaths of the famous to come in threes, not in the dozens.But all through the summer of 2009 came a ceaseless and somber drumbeat, as idols of all walks of life passed away. From Walter Cronkite to Sen. Ted Kennedy, the nonstop loss of luminaries continued almost as if a seasonal occurrence . as much a part of summer as hot dogs and humidity.If a filmmaker were trying to capture the summer of 2009, Michael Jackson news would be playing in the background. Many thought coverage of Jackson's death was too much; a Pew Research Center poll released in July found that 64 percent of those surveyed thought the media blitz was overdone (though none could top MTV Japan, which designated an entire week of mourning for Jackson).But news outlets went heavy on coverage for the many others who passed. Collectively, it made the constant commemorating hard to escape,...

The voice sobbing on the phone was my oldest surviving friend, Vincent Lovecraft, my co-star in so many movies, always as the lustful villain who swore at me again and again his timeless catch-phrase: "Love me - or die!" But now he wasn't threatening me; he was trying through tears to ask me, "Where were you when you heard about - about - [sob] about Gs?" No need for him to say more. I knew he meant Gale Storm, the Queen of Com, everyone's Little Margie, the Greatest Entertainer of the 20th Century. All humans will remember where they were and what they were doing when they first heard Gale Storm had died. ("I was reading Tallulah Morehead's column on The Huffington Post" many will answer.) I was leaning out my window to holler rude things at the helicopters circling around...

Entertainer Fred Travalena has become the latest star to pass away in a week of tragic celebrity deaths.

The impressionist and singer was 66 when he died at his home in Encino, California on Sunday.

Travalena fought non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2002 and the disease returned last summer after going into remission.

Dubbed 'The Man of a Thousand Faces' for his ability to mimic stars like Jack Nicholson, Sammy Davis, Jr. and even Bugs Bunny, Travalena became a big name in America in the early 1970s.

He went on to become a mainstay headliner in Las Vegas, Reno, Nevada and Atlantic City, New Jersey - and was a regular on the U.S. chat show circuit.

In one part of his beloved act, Travalena mimicked all the U.S. presidents, from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush.

He was also famous for singing signature tune Have I Told You Lately as Kermit the Frog, Frank Sinatra and Katharine Hepburn, according to the Los Angeles Times. He even wowed fans with a routine, in which he played Sinatra imitating Boy George.

Flowers have been placed on his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which is awash with tributes to those stars who have passed away in the last seven days, like Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Gale Storm and Ed McMahon.

American TV personality Gale Storm has died, aged 87.

The actress/singer passed away in hospital on Saturday after battling ill health, according to her son Peter Bonnell.

Storm - born Josephine Owaissa Cottle - shot to fame in 1940 when she entered a talent contest for a radio show called Gateway to Hollywood in 1940.

She won over the radio audience and landed roles in several movies and sang in several Soundies - three-minute musicals.

In 1952 with a starring role in sitcom My Little Margie and went on to bag her own TV series, The Gale Storm Show.

Storm went onto appear in numerous musicals including Gian Carlo Menotti's The Old Maid and the Thief.

She is survived by her four children, eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

A trifecta of stars dot Hollywood's Walk of Fame for TV legend Gale Storm, who died at age 87, in Danville, California. The beautiful actress starred in films, recorded music and was a huge hit on the smallscreen. In her own words, Gale noted on her website: "My first TV series, My Little Margie, with Charles Farrell was originally a summer replacement for I Love Lucy. I was overwhelmed by the immediate success of it. During the next four years, millions of people saw the 126 episodes of 'Margie' on TV and listened to separate, live episodes on network radio." Following the success of "Margie," Gale starred in "The Gale Storm Show," and "Oh Susanna" where Zasu Pitts...

After appearing in a long string of B-movies, Storm finally made a name for herself in the vintage TV sitcom My Little Margie, which ran from 1952-'55 on CBS and NBC. ...Storm made just three guest star appearances on scripted TV shows after The Gale Storm Show was canceled, the last as Maisie Mayberry on a 1989 episode of Murder, She Wrote, according to a list of her credits on imdb.com.

This just in...she was a '50s favorite: Los Angeles (AP) - Gale Storm , whose wholesome appearance and perky personality made her one of early television's biggest stars, has died at age 87. The actress died Saturday at a convalescent hospital in Danville, said her son, Peter Bonnell. He says she died of natural causes.    Storm was a Texas high [...]...