Our final Oscar Levant Special Subject episode covers his contribution to two of the greatest MGM musicals, Vincente Minnelli's An American in Paris (1951) and The Band Wagon (1953), plus a 20th Century Fox curiosity, The I Don't Care Girl (1953) in which Mitzi Gaynor supposedly plays early 20th century vaudeville wild woman Eva Tanguay. Levant reaches new heights as a cinematic presence in An American in Paris, a film that, we argue, forms part of an "art life" Levant trilogy with Rhapsody in Blue and Humoresque, then flaunts some virtuoso piano performances in The I Don't Care Girl before succumbing to a heart attack prior to filming The Band Wagon. We give our general impressions of these must-see musicals while also trying to determine what quality Levant brings to An American in Paris, in particular, that it wouldn't have without him (besides self-loathing narcissism). What does Oscar Levant have to tell us about the figure of the artist?

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951) [dir. Vincente Minnelli]

0h 27m 28s: THE I DON’T CARE GIRL (1953) [dir. Lloyd Bacon]

0h 38m 57s: THE BAND WAGON (1953) [dir. Vincente Minnelli]

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

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The movies we viewed for this RKO 1931 Studios Year by Year episode couldn't be more different: the sprawling Cimarron (starring Richard Dix as America's psychotic inner conflict) prompts us to speculate about Edna Ferber as a source auteur and the intertwining of her vision of America with Hollywood across three decades; while the tight, play-like Traveling Husbands (starring Evelyn Brent as a bitter sex worker with noble impulses), demonstrates the pressures capitalism exerts on men and therefore on women. But together, these movies show that the Pre-Code is good for a lot more than just sex-and-crime titillation.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: CIMARRON [dir. Wesley Ruggles]

0h 41m 56s: TRAVELING HUSBANDS [dir. Paul Sloane]

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Studio Film Capsules provided by The RKO Story by Richard B. Jewell & Vernon Harbin

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

Additional 1930 information from: Forgotten Films to Remember by John Springer

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* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

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Our Gloria Grahame Acteurist Oeuvre-view continues with A Woman's Secret (1949), an oddball psychological drama with a screenplay by Citizen Kane writer Herman J. Mankiewicz and directed by Grahame's new husband Nicholas Ray; and Roughshod (1949), a consciously feminist Western written by a bunch of leftists. Proving her versatility-within-typecasting yet again, Grahame moves easily from the unlikely comic centre of a noirish vortex to a sympathetic sex worker in a fallen woman melodrama that uses the Western genre to deconstruct masculinity. (And if that makes it sound dull, it's also incredibly dark at moments, with John Ireland raising the tension as a nasty villain.) And in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we talk about Rear Window, voyeurism, movie-watching, and scapegoats.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: A WOMAN’S SECRET (1949) [dir. Nicholas Ray]

0h 27m 30s: ROUGHSHOD (1949) [dir. Mark Robson]

0h 43m 52s: Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto – Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) at The Revue Cinema

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

A curious pairing for this Fox 1931 Studios Year by Year episode: an unsung WWI drama, but as good as any, William K. Howard's Surrender, starring Warner Baxter, Leila Hyams, and an almost unrecognizable (both his appearance and his performance) Ralph Bellamy; and the Will Rogers version of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which mainly seems to exist so that Rogers can lasso a lance from a knight in a joust. Spoiler: modernity proves to be more than either King Arthur's Court or Ralph Bellamy want to handle, and we dig into their discontents.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT [dir. David Butler]

0h 28m 28s: SURRENDER [dir. William K. Howard]

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Studio Film Capsules provided by The Fox Film Corporation, 1915 – 1935: A History and Filmography by Aubrey Solomon

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

Additional 1930 information from: Forgotten Films to Remember by John Springer

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* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

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We say farewell to Farrow and Allen (for now, although we'll probably encounter them individually on the podcast again) with this final episode on their cinematic collaboration, covering Alice (1990), Shadows and Fog (1991), and one of their very best, the ill-fated Husbands and Wives (1992). In the first two, two more Allen characters struggle to live the good life in what couldn't be more different settings, and then we join Allen in meditating on all of the different ways that romantic relationships attempting to function at a high level can go wrong. Then, on Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we briefly glance at Siodmak's 1944 Phantom Lady, covered by us before, and Ray's In a Lonely Place (1950), to be covered in detail very soon as part of our Gloria Grahame series.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: ALICE (1990) [dir. Woody Allen]

0h 23m 27s: SHADOWS AND FOG (1991) [dir. Woody Allen]

0h 33m 41s: HUSBANDS AND WIVES (1992) [dir. Woody Allen]

0h 59m 00s: Our favourites from the Farrow/Allen canon

1h 01m 54s: Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto – Robert Siodmak’s PHANTOM LADY (1944) at TIFF Lightbox & Nicholas Ray’s IN A LONELY PLACE (1950) at The Revue Cinema (Designing the Movies)

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

In this Gloria Grahame Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode we get to see more of what MGM was (not) doing with our acteur's career. Underused in Song of the Thin Man (1947), in which she brings the only real noir energy to the final Thin Man film, she gets a similarly brief but memorable role in the Red Skelton vehicle Merton of the Movies (1947), playing the most innocent nymphomaniac in cinematic history. We uncover the legacy of Harry Leon Wilson's 1922 Merton of the Movies novel and surprise ourselves with our appreciation of Red Skelton's acting.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: SONG OF THE THIN MAN (1947) [dir. Edward Buzzell]

0h 16m 33s: MERTON OF THE MOVIES (1947) [dir. Robert Alton]

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

This round of Warner Bros. 1931 brings us two gems by a couple of Pre-Code masters, Roy Del Ruth's Blonde Crazy and William A. Wellman's Night Nurse, showing off the early star charisma of Jimmy Cagney (oozing vulnerability) and Barbara Stanwyck (spitting fire), ably supported by Joan Blondell in both cases. Bonus: Young Clark Gable shows up for another, even nastier 1931 turn. Dave makes the case for Blonde Crazy as a proto-screwball comedy (Warner Bros. does Trouble in Paradise?). And in another Fear and Moviegoing discussion of Now, Voyager, we discuss the Bette Davis melodrama's authentic ties to Transcendentalism and what it means to not have sex for the right reasons.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: NIGHT NURSE [dir. William A. Wellman]

0h 31m 33s: BLONDE CRAZY (dir. Roy Del Ruth]

0h 46m 59s: Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto –Irving Rapper’s Now, Voyager (1942) at TIFF Lightbox

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Studio Film Capsules provided by The Warner Brothers Story by Clive Hirschhorn

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

Additional 1930 information from: Forgotten Films to Remember by John Springer

+++

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

Our second Gloria Grahame Acteur-Oeuvre-view episode includes a curious under-use of our acteur in the all-around baffling musical comedy It Happened in Brooklyn (nevertheless memorable for the chemistry between Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Durante), and a judicious use of her by RKO in Edward Dmytryk's anti-fascist noir Crossfire (also 1947). We try to work out just what Grahame's ongoing avant-garde skit with Paul Kelly (as "The Man") brings to Dmytryk's portrait of a dysfunctional post-war America. One thing's for sure: she sure hates him!

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: IT HAPPENED IT BROOKLYN (1947) [dir. Richard Whorf]

0h 21m 30s: CROSSFIRE (1947) [dir. Edward Dmytryk]

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!