By Alan Hurst June 22, 2019 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the passing of Judy Garland. She was only 47, but seemed to have packed multiple lifetimes into that short span of years. She had achieved significant success in films, records, on stage, and on television, but the well-known struggles were equally part of her…
By Alan Hurst Picking my own personal list of 10 best films is a frustrating treat. It’s a list that’s heavily influenced by whim and mood and it varies by year, by month, by week as I revisit some films and discover others. There are always a few staples that consistently make the list –…
By Alan Hurst The sixties were a transitional decade for a lot of reasons and those transitions are evident in the decade’s best comedies. From the sit-com innocence of Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1960) to the oh-so-trendy sexuality of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), there was a major shift in both…
By Alan Hurst It doesn’t happen often but it has happened often enough for it to be the stuff of dreams – hitting the big-time in films in a big way your first time at bat. The people below all had either terrific first years or a career defining film debut that assured considerable award…
By Alan Hurst Turner Classic Movies was recently showing Key Largo (1948) and I sat down and started watching. Again. It’s one of my favorite stage to screen adaptations of the era – a great cast, suspenseful direction by John Huston, steamy locale, a strong script based on Maxwell Anderson’s play and Johnny Rocco is one…
By Alan Hurst From a first viewing in the late 70s and then multiple viewings since, no other film of the horror/suspense genre has ever had the impact on me that Rosemary’s Baby (1968) has. It was a big hit when it came out in 1968 and it sill holds up today. It’s the perfect…
By Alan Hurst The Best Actress Oscar race for the films of 1962 was a year of grand dame comebacks, high profile stage adaptations with very little room for new faces. The final five making the list in a pretty competitive year were: Anne Bancroft in The Miracle Worker (1962) Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to…