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In honor of Clara Bow's 110th birthday, this week on "Film Friday" I bring you the only film I've seen with her so far, which also happens to be the first sound picture she made. Theatrical release poster Directed by Dorothy Arzner, The Wild Party (1929) rev olves around Winston College, an all-female school where the students seem to be more interested in having fun and partying than studying. When the young and attractive professor James "Gil" Gilmore (Fredric March) starts teaching Anthropology there, all the girls immediately feel attracted to him, especially Stella Ames (Clara Bow), the wildest and most popular student in the school. She recognizes Gil as the man with whom she once accidentally shared a berth on a train, thereby risking her reputation, but he does give any indication that he remembers Stella . After being thrown out of the school's traditional costume party for wearing revealing outfits, Stella and her friends go t...

To celebrate Natalie Wood's birthday, this week on "Film Friday" I'm bringing you one of my favorite films of hers, which also happens to be the first film I ever saw with her. Original release poster by Bill Gold Directed by Elia Kazan, Splendor in the Grass (1961) tells the story of Wilma "Deanie" Loomis (Natalie Wood) and Bud Stamper (Warren Beatty), two young lovers living in a small Kansas town in the late 1920s. Deanie's mother (Audrey Christie) is a domineering woman who boasts of her aversion to men and warns her daughter that nice girls do not have sexual feelings. Bud's father, Ace (Pat Hingle), an arrogant self-made millionaire, has "all his hopes pinned" on his son and tells him to forget marriage until he graduates from Yale. Unable to consummate their love, the confused and frustrated youngsters end their relationship. After Bud becomes sexually involved with Juanita Howard (Jan Norris), the most permissive girl in...

Natalie Wood was born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko on July 20, 1938 in San Francisco, California. She was nicknamed "Natasha" by her parents, Nikolai and Maria, two Russian immigrants living on the edge of poverty and who could barely speak English. In her youth, Maria had dreamed of becoming an actress and when her precious Natasha was born, she began to transfer those ambitions to her youngest daughter. She would frequently take the girl to the movies and by the age of three, "Natasha sat through two-hour films without moving." My mother used to tell me that the cameraman who pointed his lens out at the audience at the end of the Paramount newsreel was taking my picture. I'd pose and smile like he was going to make me famous or something. I believed everything my mother told me. (Natalie Wood) With Welles in Tomorrow Is Forever After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Nikolai took up American citizenship as Nicholas G...