Tag: TCM

Whatever Happened to Baby Peggy?

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Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen the ads for the TCM Classic Cruises and thought, “That would be fun.”

But then we can’t help but think, “But it would have been much more fun ten or fifteen years ago.” The sad truth is, there just aren’t that many performers left from the 1930s and ’40s and, of course, there are even fewer that date back as far as the silent movie era.

In that latter category, there’s Mickey Rooney and Carla Laemmle (who was never a big star, but did appear in some big pictures, including Lon Chaney‘s Phantom of the Opera and the 1931 version of Dracula starring Bela Lugosi).

And then there’s Diana Serra Cary (née Peggy-Jean Montgomery), who was one of the biggest stars of the silent era, albeit at a very young age.

Cary, then known as Baby Peggy, made her film debut in 1921. She went on to make more than 150 shorts for Century Pictures before signing with Universal Pictures in 1923 for $1.5 million a year. Jackie Coogan, the top child star of the day, was growing up, and Universal was hoping Peggy, who would now be starring in feature-length pictures, pick up the slack left by his declining popularity.

Peggy is to have received more than 1.2 million fan letters during her relatively brief time in the spotlight, but by 1925, the bottom fell out of her career. Her father played it tough in negotiating with independent producer Sol Lesser, for whom she had made a couple of features, and Lesser not only declined to work with her any more, he used his influence in Hollywood to see that no one else would hire her, either. She made only one more silent movie, a small role in the 1926 film April Fool, and then began touring in vaudeville.

With the crash of 1929, Peggy’s family fortunes went in the tank. Her parents had spent most of her earnings, and what investments they had made were now worthless. She eventually stooped to doing extra work in the 1930s, but by 1938, at the age of 19, she was through working in pictures.

In later years, Peggy became a writer and author, publishing a number of books about Hollywood, including her 1996 memoir, Whatever Happened to Baby Peggy?. She’s still active today, making personal appearances at film festivals and revival houses.

Beginning at 8 p.m. on Monday, December 3, Turner Classic Movies will air a new documentary about Peggy’s life and career, Baby Peggy: The Elephant in the Room (2012), and four of her pictures (most of which are lost films), three shorts—Carmen Jr. (1923), Peg o’ the Mounted (1924), and Such Is Life (1924)—and one feature, Captain January (1924).

Step by Step with Stan and Ollie

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Stan and Laurel at the bottom of the stepsThe comedy shorts of the 1920s and ’30s were a key part of our youth. You didn’t have to turn to TCM to watch movies of that era in those days (good thing, too—since cable TV wasn’t yet in existence). We spent hours viewing Laurel and Hardy and Our Gang comedies, simply because they were often just about the only things on a kid would care to watch.

So when we paid a visit to Los Angeles some years ago, a visit to the concrete steps that were featured in Stan and Ollie’s The Music Box was high on our list of things to do.

You remember The Music Box—it’s the classic short that finds our boys hired to deliver a piano, and when they arrive at the address, they are faced with an endless cement staircase standing between them and the house that is the piano’s destination. (If you’ve never seen this short, you can rectify that here.)

Back in the day, the area around those steps was a bit more open, but it’s quite developed now—you could never achieve the camera angles necessary to shoot a remake of The Music Box. But the steps themselves are still there, and one enterprising soul has undertaken the task of creating a video comprising then-and-now shots of this memorable location. We enjoyed the video, and we think you will, tool

Wowed by Warren William

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Though he may not be well remembered by your average Jill or Joe, for movie buffs, Warren William is an icon of talkies-era Hollywood—especially the pre-code years.

Though he played a few good guys, William’s typical character ranged from roué to to slimeball. He is, for fans of 1930s cinema, the man we love to hate. As Roger Fristoe wrote for tcm.com, “William played his fast-talking, opportunistic characters with such style and dash that Depression-era audiences often found themselves rooting for him.”

William’s characters were not fellows you’d trust with your sister—or your wife. Or your girlfriend. Or your cousin. Or your mother. But he had a slimy sort of savoir-faire that makes him but irresistible to on the screen, silver or small.

We rarely pass up an opportunity to see a Warren William picture, and neither should you. He’s the featured star today—Thursday, August 30—during TCM’s August Under the Stars festival. If you’re familiar with Warren’s work, you’re bound to find a title or two you’ve not seen among the 16 pictures being shown during his 24 hours in the spotlight.

And if you’ve not yet been exposed to William, set that alarm clock or DVR to ensure you don’t miss a minute of the fun, which kicks off at 6 a.m. ET with 1934’s Bedside, a prime pre-code that will serve a fine introduction to William’s slithery charms.

You screened it for her, you can screen it for me…

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Like most movie buffs, we occasionally are asked to name our favorite movie.

At first thought, it seems a difficult question. After all, there aren’t many genres of movies we don’t enjoy, and we happily watch pictures more than a century old and the latest releases. We have a list of favorite directors as long as our arm and a list of favorite actors and actresses as long as our leg.

But in the end, it’s really not that tough a call. For our money, Casablanca is the perfect movie—or the closest we’ve ever seen to it. Amazing performances from the whole cast, from Bogart and Bergman down to the tiniest bit roles. A witty, suspenseful, and moving script that deftly combines romance, drama, and humor and features some of the most celebrated dialogue and memorable scenes ever committed to celluloid.

We’ve seen Casablanca a dozen times or more, most of those on a big screen, surrounded by a collection of appreciative fellow movie buffs. It’s one of the benefits of living in a city like New York; we get to see an amazing range of movies from across a century-plus of cinema in theatres.

But there are plenty of burgs where a movie classic like Casablanca can be seen only on television, on a DVD or when Turner Classic Movies airs it. So I got excited—not for myself, but for the millions of Americans living somewhere other than NYC or Los Angeles or Chicago or San Francisco or half dozen other cities that have outlets for viewing classic movies in theatres—when I learned that on Wednesday, March 21, TCM is commemorating the movie’s 70th anniversary with a one-time digital screening of this classic in more than 335 theatres across the country. There will be an introductory short starring TCM host Robert Osborne, who will “take audiences behind the scenes of this epic love story.”

Every theatre is showing the movie at 7 p.m., so in each time zone, thousands of moviegoers will be watching it simultaneously. We love that.

There’s a good chance there’s a participating theatre near you. If you’ve never seen this wonderful movie on a big screen with an audience of fellow movie fans, you owe it to yourself to attend. Tickets went on sale today.

What to watch, March 21-27

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So, we’ve been considering for some time offering a weekly round-up of the classic pictures we’re inclined to recommend among those being aired in the week ahead on our favorite network (and surely it’s yours, too), Turner Classic Movies.

We’ll stick mostly to the same years in this listing that we generally focus on here at Cladrite Radio—the 20th century up to 1960 or so—but we reserve the right to step outside those boundaries when we’re so inspired. We’ll recommend whatever tickles our fancy that week; some movies we love won’t get cited, and other that we know are special-interest only will. No squawking allowed (well, you can squawk, but it won’t do you any good).

We’ll try to post this every weekend, usually on Sunday. If you think it’s a good idea and you’d like to see this weekly listing continue, let us know by clicking the Like button at the bottom of this post. If we don’t hear from enough of you, we’ll pull the plug, and no hard feelings.

All that said, here are our TCM recommendations for the upcoming week:

Monday

1:45 PM
THE FEMININE TOUCH (1941)
Cast: Rosalind Russell, Don Ameche, Kay Francis. Dir: W.S. Van Dyke II.
A frothy comedy with two of our favorite actresses.

8:00 PM
KINGS ROW (1942)
Cast: Ann Sheridan, Robert Cummings, Ronald Reagan. Dir: Sam Wood.
Can’t go wrong with Ms. Sheridan, and it’s said to be Reagan’s best work. If you’re going to watch just one Ronald Reagan movie, perhaps this should be it.

10:15 PM
CAUGHT (1949)
Cast: James Mason, Barbara Bel Geddes, Robert Ryan. Dir: Max Ophuls.
Ophuls is one of our ten favorite directors of all time, and this is a crackerjack thriller.

2:30 AM
THE SEVEN SAMURAI (1954)
Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Kuninori Kodo. Dir: Akira Kurosawa.
Should be seen on a big screen, of course, but perhaps you have one of those at home.

Tuesday

3:45 PM
A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951)
Cast: Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Karl Malden. Dir: Elia Kazan.
A classic, but the changes required by the Production Code grate exceedingly if you know the play well.

8:00 PM
WIFE VS. SECRETARY (1936)
Cast: Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, Jean Harlow. Dir: Clarence Brown.
Jean Harlow’s the star of the month in March on TCM, and there’s not a picture among the six listed below that we wouldn’t recommend to you.

9:45 PM
RED DUST (1932)
Cast: Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Mary Astor. Dir: Victor Fleming.
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