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In Portugal (where I'm from), Father's Day is celebrated on March 19. So, for this week's «Film Friday» I thought I'd bring you a film that features a father as its main character. Directed by Michael Curtiz, Life With Father (1947) follows stockbroker Clarence Day (William Powell), who strives to make his 1890s New York City household run as efficiently as his business. He and his wife Vinnie (Irene Dunne) have four sons. The eldest, Clarence, Jr. (Jimmy Lydon), is headed for Yale. John (Martin Milner), the next eldest, likes to invent things, while brother Whitney (Johnny Calkins) struggles to learn his catechism, and Harlan (Derek Scott), the youngest, is most interested in his dog. Knowing how much Clarence dislikes it when visitors stay in the house, Vinnie neglects to tell her husband that their cousin, Cora Cartwright (ZaSu Pitts), and her young companion, Mary Skinner (Elizabeth Taylor), will spend a week with them.   Irene Dunne, William Powell, Jimmy Lydon a...

In honour of Ginger Rogers' 105th birthday, which is tomorrow, this week on «Film Friday» I thought I would bring you one of my favourite films of hers. This is also the picture that gave her the only Academy Award for Best Actress of her career. Directed by Sam Wood, Kitty Foyle (1940) opens with Kitty Foyle (Ginger Rogers), a cosmetic saleswoman in a New York boutique owned by Delphine Detaille (Odette Myrtil), trying to decide whether she should marry Dr. Mark Eisen (James Craig) and be respectable, or sail away with the already-married Wyn Strafford (Dennis Morgan), whom she has loved for many years and has just re-entered her life. As she wrestles with her conscience, Kitty thinks back to her youth in Philadelphia, where she lived with her Irish father, Tom (Ernest Cossart). Teenage Kitty is obsessed with the city's elite «Main Liners» and dreams of marrying a rich man, despite her father's warnings against getting carried away with her fantasies.   Ginger Rogers, Ja...

Directed by W. S. Van Dyke, Marie Antoinette (1938) opens when Marie Antoinette (Norma Shearer) is informed by her mother, Empress Marie Therese of Austria (Alma Kruger), that she is to marry the heir to the throne of France, the Dauphin Louis XVI (Robert Morley). Marie expects a life of grandeur, but finds that Louis is a shy and introverted man, who proves to be an unwilling husband as well. Her problems at the court are increased by Madame du Barry (Gladys George), the scheming mistress of King Louis XV (John Barrymore), who takes special pleasure in taunting Marie's inability to conceive an heir with the Dauphin. Although Marie initially seems to enjoy the support of the Duke d'Orléans (Joseph Schildkraut), he later reveals himself to be a duplicitous and power-hungry confidante. Meanwhile, Marie meets the dashing Swedish diplomat Count Axel Fersen (Tyrone Power), and the two soon begin a romantic affair. A few days after their fourth wedding anniversary, as Marie goes t...

In this first ever «Film Friday» I thought I would tell you about the film that introduced me to the wonders of both black and white cinema and James Stewart. Directed by George Cukor, The Philadelphia Story (1940) revolves around the high-society wedding of snobbish socialite Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn) and pompous self-made man George Kittredge (John Howard). In return for suppressing a scandalous article about Tracy's estranged father, Seth (John Halliday), her ex-husband, C. K. Dexter Haven (Gary Grant), makes a deal with magazine editor Sidney Kidd (Henry Daniell) to introduce a reporter, Macaulay «Mike» Connor (James Stewart), and a photographer, Liz Embrie (Ruth Hussey), into the Lord household for an exclusive story on the wedding. To protect the reputation of her family — which includes her oblivious mother Margaret (Mary Nash) and her precocious sister Dinah (Virginia Weidler) — Tracy reluctantly agrees to let them stay and cover the event. John Howard, Cary Grant, Ka...