Category: Movie Pass Adventures

  • Walk of Fame Movies: The Devil’s Needle and Norma Talmadge

    Norma Talmadge in The Devil's Needle
    Tully Marshall, Marguerite Marsh, and Norma Talmadge in The Devil's Needle

    Things I learned from this movie:

    • Don’t take medical advice from a model
    • If you get hooked on drugs, just go work on a farm for a bit and you’ll be cured.

    The most interesting part of this movie was seeing how the restoration team dealt with the degraded film stock.

    Composite picture. On the left, a mockup of Norma Talmadge's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On the right, a black and white portrait photo of Norma Talmadge.

    Norma Talmadge (1500 Vine Street) was one of the top silent film stars. Like many other actors, her popularity fell with the rise of talkies. Unlike many others, she had saved a ton of money and was happy to get out of the public eye.

    If you’ve ever driven down Talmadge Street in Los Feliz and wondered who it was named after, now you know.

    Today’s poster makes a morality tale about drug abuse look like a rom-com.

    Fediverse reactions

  • Walk of Fame Movies: Kansas City Confidential and Edward Small

    Mr. Big from Kansas City Confidential
    Three masked criminals from Kansas City Confidential

    A fun little caper flick. Does it make sense? No, but everyone in the movie believes it does, and that’s enough to make it work. Jack Elam is a glorious twitchy rag doll of creepiness.

    Composite picture. On the left, a mockup of Edward Small's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On the right, a black and white portrait photo of Edward Small.

    Edward Small (1501 Vine Street- I accidentally did this one early) produced about a billion movies, mostly westerns. There are very few pictures of him online. I guess he was camera shy, but you wouldn’t guess that from his production company’s logo:

    The logo for Edward Small Productions. Giant letters "ES" fill more than half the screen. Below them are the words "EDWARD SMALL PRODUCTIONS"
    I guess “Small” didn’t refer to how he wrote his initials.

    Today’s source poster was pretty obscure, but it looked cool so I went for it.

    A fake poster for Kansas City Confidential mimicking the poster for Atlantis: The Lost Continent.
    Fediverse reactions

  • Walk of Fame Movies: Postal Inspector and Ricardo Cortez

    Bela Lugosi, Patricia Ellis, and David Oliver in Postal Inspector.
    Michael Loring and Patricia Ellis in Postal Inspector.

    Well, this one’s a stinker. More than once it tries to make asking someone “Did any of this happen by mail? Do you have the correspondence?” seem really exciting. It feels like a particularly dull episode of Dragnet. It also features the lead actor complaining about his little brother’s girlfriend for no reason.

    Composite picture. On the left, a mockup of Ricardo Cortez's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On the right, a black and white portrait photo of Ricardo Cortez.

    Ricardo Cortez (1500 Vine Street) plays Inspector Bill Davis. He was born Jacob Kranze (or Krantz), but the studio thought he’d sell better as a Latin Lover than a Jewish guy. He had a long career: mostly as a character actor, but he was also the first Sam Spade in the 1931 version of The Maltese Falcon. I’m not sure how I landed on this dud to watch him.

    Today’s fake poster is all about the inspectors, baby:

    A fake poster for Postal Inspector mimicking the poster for Inspector Gadget.
    Fediverse reactions

  • Walk of Fame Movies: Dance, Girl, Dance and Dorothy Arzner

    Lucille Ball and Maureen O'Hara in Dance, Girl, Dance.
    Lucille Ball, Maureen O'Hara and Virginia Field in Dance, Girl, Dance.

    Maureen O’Hara and Louis Hayward might be top billed, but this is Lucille Ball’s movie. I really only knew her work from I Love Lucy onward, so it was kind of wild to see her as a sexy burlesque star dancing the hula.

    Composite picture. On the left, a mockup of Dorothy Arzner's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On the right, a black and white portrait photo of Dorothy Arzner.

    Dance, Girl, Dance was directed by Dorothy Arzner (1500 Vine Street) and HOLY CRAP WAS SHE AWESOME. The first woman in the Director’s Guild of America, the first woman to direct a sound film, and the inventor of the freaking boom mic!

    She had a 40 year relationship with choreographer Marion Martin. She tried to keep her private life private, but she never hid who she was.

    Today’s fake poster comes from a different Girl movie.

    A fake poster for Dance, Girl, Dance mimicking the poster for Girl, Interrupted.
    Fediverse reactions

  • Walk of Fame Movies: I’m No Angel and Mae West

    Mae West and Cary Grant in I'm No Angel.
    Mae West and a Lion in I'm No Angel
    Composite picture. On the left, a mockup of Mae West's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On the right, a black and white portrait photo of Mae West.

    Normally I write a little blurb about the movie and a second blurb about the featured Walk of Fame person, but I don’t think it’s possible to separate these two.

    Mae West (1560 Vine Street) isn’t my cup of tea, but she was an undeniable powerhouse. She was a woman in her forties (who didn’t try to hide her age) who wrote her own movies, and and didn’t shy away from sex right as the Hayes Code was cracking down on movie content.

    Part of the problem I had with this movie was I kept thinking “She’s just doing a Mae West impression.” She made her self into such an icon that watching her movies now feels like a parody, even though she’s the source.

    Today’s fake poster is based completely on both movies having “No” in the title.

    A fake poster for I'm No Angel mimicking the poster for No Country For Old Men.
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  • Streaming Movie Adventures: The Daytrippers

    Parker Posey & Hope Davis in The Daytrippers
    Anne Meara, Liev Schrieber, and Parker Posey in The Daytrippers

    If this movie were made now, the production company would have hired someone to ghostwrite Liev Schreiber’s “man with a dog head” book.

    I recently had a wave of fake posters that worked really well. That appears to have passed. This is another “there’s a good idea in there somewhere, I think” poster.

    A fake poster for The Daytrippers mimicking the poster for Die Another Day.
    Fediverse reactions

  • Walk of Fame Movies: Jewel Robbery and Helen Vinson

    Kay Francis and William Powell in Jewel Robbery.
    William Powell and Kay Francis in Jewel Robbery.

    Some clues that this is a pre-Code film:

    • The first scene is two scantily clad women talking about cheating on their husbands.
    • Two men are openly pursuing one of the married women.
    • One of the men is a charming jewel thief, and the woman is into it big time.
    • The thief casually hands out weed, and it gets smoked.
    • All law enforcement is either inept or corrupt

    …and of course the thief gets away.

    Composite picture. On the left, a mockup of Helen Vinson's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On the right, a black and white portrait photo of Helen Vinson.

    This was Helen Vinson’s first movie role. She acted for a dozen or so years before retiring. Her star is at 1560 Vine Street.

    Today’s poster is based on a very similar film about police corruption.

    A fake poster for Jewel Robbery mimicking the poster for Serpico.
    Fediverse reactions

  • Movie Pass Adventures: Good Fortune

    Aziz Ansari and Keanu Reeves in Good Fortune.
    Keanu Reeves in Good Fortune.

    I wonder if I would have liked Aziz Ansari’s first attempt at directing more than this, but Bill Murray creepiness apparently killed that project. This is pretty mediocre, but Keanu is perfectly cast as a dim-witted angel.

    Today’s poster is also mediocre, but I thing the logos for the movie and Lionsgate-as-Nickelodeon work.

    A fake poster for Good Fortune poorly mimicking the poster for Good Burger.

    Fediverse reactions

  • Walk of Fame Movies: The Young in Heart and Richard Wallace

    Roland Young, Paulette Goddard, Billie Piper, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in The Young in Heart.
    Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Paulette Goddard in The Young in Heart.

    I would buy a Flying Wombat from Roland Young.

    Composite picture. On the left, a mockup of Richard Wallace's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On the right, a black and white portrait photo of Richard Wallace.

    The most interesting fact I could find about Richard Wallace- and who knows if it’s actually factual- is that he made the jump from shorts to full length films with the help of noted identity chameleon Corrine Griffith.

    I kept wanting to call this movie “The Young at Heart,” so this is a good choice for a fake poster.

    A fake poster for The Young in Heart mimicking the poster for Wild at Heart.
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  • Walk of Fame movies: You’d Be Surprised and Earle Williams

    Dorothy Sebastian and Raymond Griffith in You'd Be Surprised.
    Dorothy Sebastian and Raymond Griffith in You'd Be Surprised.

    I wonder if this was originally written as a play. Almost every scene is shot in the same room from the same angle. It’s supposed to be a murder mystery, but that’s really just an excuse for Raymond Griffith to do his shtick.

    Composite picture. On the left, a mockup of Earle Williams's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On the right, a black and white portrait photo of Earle Williams.

    Eleven years before this movie, Earle Williams (1560 Vine Street) was voted America’s number one star. A year after it was released, he was dead from pneumonia.

    Today’s fake poster is my second James Bond ripoff homage.

    A fake poster for You'd Be Surprised mimicking the poster for You Only Live Twice.
    Hey, a coroner is like a spy, right?

    Fediverse reactions
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