Back to Golden Days

I started this blog six years ago as a way to share my passion for classic films and the Old Hollywood era. I used to watch dozens of classic films every month, and every time I discovered a new star I liked I would go and watch their entire filmography. But somewhere along the way, that passion dimmed down. For instance, I watched 73 classic films in 2016, and only 10 in 2020. The other day, I found this film with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. that I had never heard of, and for some reason it made me really excited about Old Hollywood again. It made me really miss the magic of that era and all the wonderful actors and actresses that graced the silver screen. And it also made me think of all the reasons why I fell in love with classic films in the first place. I came up with 80 reasons, which I thought would be fun to share. Most of them are just random little scenes or quirky little quotes, but put them together and they spell Old Hollywood to me. This is part four (the final one) of the 80 r...

The 1950s were an era of both prosperity and great conflict. After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a series of conflicts collectively known as the Cold War. The Soviet Union began the Space Race with the launch of Sputnik 1, while Fidel Castro became the first Communist leader in the Western hemisphere. The landmark Brown v. Board of Education court decision ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, and the Civil Rights Movement was born. Joseph Stalin died, the Vietnam War began, and Elvis Presley turned rock 'n' roll into the most popular music genre in the world.   (from left to right) Replica of Sputnik 1; Fidel Castro; the Vietnam War; Elvis Presley.   The 1950s changed Hollywood as well. As a result of the introduction of television, studios were desperate to attract audiences back to the theatres and resorted to such exotic techniques as CinemaScope and 3D film. The Cold War era zeitgeist translated into a ren...

Directed by Michael Gordon, Pillow Talk (1959) tells the story of Jan Morrow (Doris Day), a successful and self-sufficient interior decorator who, much to her annoyance, shares a party line on her home phone with a philandering Broadway composer named Brad Allen (Rock Hudson). Even though they have never actually met face to face, they soon develop a feud over the use of the party line: Brad is constantly using the phone to chat with one woman after the other, while Jan needs to use it for business. One of Jan's clients is millionaire Jonathan Forbes (Tony Randall), who repeatedly throws himself at her to no avail. Unbeknownst to Jan, Jonathan is actually Brad's old college buddy and current Broadway benefactor. Rock Hudson and Doris Day as Brad Allen and Jan Morrow in Pillow Talk . One evening in a nightclub, Brad finally sees Jan and learns who she is. Attracted to her, he decides to fake a Southern accent and invent a new persona: Rex Stetson, a wealthy Texas rancher. He su...

I'm decidedly terrible at making lists of any kind — mostly because I change my mind all the time. If I were to write a list of my favourite films, I wouldn't be surprised if I ended with a document longer than Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time (for reference, that's 4215 pages long). So, as you can probably imagine, it was a bit of a struggle to select five films I would like to have with me if I was hypothetically stranded on a deserted island. After almost giving myself a headache, I think I have finally come up with the five lucky winners. Bear in mind, however, that if you asked me to do this again tomorrow, my answer would most likely be completely different. My criteria for choosing these films were fairly simple. First of all, I wanted films that make me happy, films that never fail to put a smile on my face. When you are stranded on a deserted island, I assume you would want something cheerful to keep your spirits up. As such, the pictures on this list ...

In the late 1950s, the film industry decided that it was essential for Doris Day to change her screen image if she was to survive as a top star. By 1959, she had not only dropped from the top box-office personalities, but her last five films had not been as profitable as previous ones. She had been the girl-next-door for too many years and now, at 35, she needed to catch up with her moviegoing public, who had grown more sophisticated with the passing of decades.    When producer Ross Hunter sent Doris a script for a new project called Pillow Talk (1959), she was instantly attracted to its humour and cleverness. However, being genuinely unaware of her potential as a sex symbol, she had difficulty visualizing herself as a chic interior decorator. Fortunately, Hunter's argument that she had «one of the wildest asses in Hollywood» convinced Doris that she was not just an old-fashioned girl and she gladly took the job. There was just one key ingredient missing: a leading man....