One of the great things about living in the Washington, DC, metro area, is the abundance of niche film festivals that pop up. Not enough of the classic variety for my taste, but occasionally the themes intersect, as happened for the last two days of the Environmental Film Festival. The theme of this year's festival was Our Cities, Our Planet, and some very thoughtful person included three silent pictures to illustrate modernization: Metropolis (1927), Speedy (1928), and Lonesome (1928), all of which were accompanied by the great Alloy Orchestra at the lovely AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, Maryland.

To be honest, I couldn't figure out why these pictures were part of the Environmental Film Fest until I read the liner notes. I figured it was because Alloy uses a "junk" percussion set in their scores, but sure, modernization and cityscapes, I'll buy that. Who am I to question why I got the opportunity to take my 11-year-old to a great silent movie with live music?

So we chose Speedy, the only one of the three I hadn't already seen. It's the story of Harold "Speedy" Swift, a young man (35-year-old Harold Lloyd) trying to get ahead in New York City. His very understanding and adorable girlfriend, Jane (Ann Christy), would like him to quit getting fired from every new job, but in the meantime, is happy to have Speedy around to help with her lovable, crotchety old grandfather, Pop Dillon (vaudeville actor Bert Woodruff). 

Pop Dillon runs one of the last horse-drawn trolleys in New York City somewhere near Greenwich Village within view of the Brooklyn Bridge, which I think is possible. In order to keep the franchise, the car has to run on its track at least once in 24 hours. City transit developers, however, are anxious to get rid of this last holdout in order to expand mechanized rail lines, but Pop won't sell until they make a decent offer. Speedy realizes that Pop's kind of low-balling the figure and wants him not to be taken advantage of. Plus, he likes the guy and doesn't want his girlfriend to worry about Pop in his declining years -- and she won't marry Speedy until she knows Pop is going to be OK.

That, and Speedy needs to keep a job for more than a day.

Naturally, the developers decide not to pay for Pop's track, but take a more economical route by hiring bunch of toughs to stage a fight on the trolley car and either wreck it, or at least keep it from running once in the required 24 hours. Speedy learns of this plan and organizes all of Pop's poker buddies who use the car after hours as a kind of clubhouse for Civil War Veterans and other neighborhood oldies, to help out when the fight begins. And what a glorious fight it is! Watch out particularly for the guy with the wooden leg.

There are spectacular chase scenes through pretty much all of New York City in 1928, from the Bronx (the Yankees, including some extend time with Babe Ruth, figure heavily in Speedy's world) to Washington Square to wherever this trolley line is. There's a charming sequence at Luna Park, Coney Island, where we really get invested in Speedy and Jane living happily ever after, because they're very sweet together. I took note of a number of rides I wish still existed and longed for the days I could eat that much crap in one afternoon. At the park Speedy and Jane also pick up an important, adorable dog.

All, of course, comes out right in the end. The trolley is saved, then sold for a comfortable figure, and Jane finally agrees to marry Speedy.

What I loved about this picture -- apart from Harold Lloyd, who reminds me oddly of my excellent brother-in-law in this movie, except Dave can keep a job and is a rabid Mets fan -- is that New York looks like New York. There are people of all races, ages, and classes in the shots, unlike, say Friends, Sex in the City, Girls, etc. for all their "modern" sensibilities. I love that as hectic and trafficky as the city is in 1928, there's still a non-anachronistic blacksmith shop on hand when your horse throws a shoe. I love the inter-generational kindness and the relative cooperativeness among strangers.

Most of all, I love how much my Wii-playing, Disney-crazy son enjoyed the show -- especially the music. Which is how it should be!

The eighth and youngest child of an army physical education instructor, Akira Kurosawa started out as a painter before turning to film as a career. His father, Isamu, believed that theater and film were important educational tools and exposed his children to Japanese and western movies early on. Kurosawa's elder brother, Heigo, work as a narrator of silent films (how cool a job would a benshi, be?!) and while Akira was studying art, the two brothers lived together and became close friends.

With the advent of talking pictures, however, Heigo got increasingly fewer jobs, and Akira, unable to make a living as a painter, turned to film as a career. Sadly, Heigo never recovered the loss of his prestige as a well-known benshi and committed suicide in 1933. The loss affected Kurosawa deeply. Several years later he became an assistant director at Photo Chemical Laboratories (PCL), a fledgling sound film studio that would later became Toho, the major studio that produced the large-lizard-monster-who-cannot-be-named-because-of-trademark-infringement.

Eventually, his talents as a screenwriter and director moved Kurosawa into directing feature films of his own unique, masterful, beautiful vision. Heavily influenced by John Ford, Frank Capra, and F.W. Murnau, Kurosawa created lyric, epic, luscious, universally accessible stories from 1943 well into the 1990s -- 30 films in all and all available, thank goodness, on DVD.

Kurosawa made some of my favorite pictures of all time -- Rashomon, Seven Samurai, and Ran among them -- and introduced me to the world of Japanese silent and classic film and from there, to the great Hayao Miyazaki, for which I am eternally grateful.

Akira Kurosawa died of a stroke on September 6, 1998 at the age of 88 in Tokyo.

One of the many great things about Columbo is that there is no such thing as a Big Spoiler: the guest star is the who what done it. In "Requiem for a Fallen Star" (January 21, 1973), Anne Baxter plays the episode's murderess, the charming, aging film star, Nora Chandler. 

Nora is being blackmailed by smoothie gossip columnist, Jerry Parks (Mel Ferrer), who has dug up some incriminating evidence about Nora's shady financial dealing that he may -- or may not, depending, if you know what I mean -- put in his upcoming tell-all book about Nora. Parks is also secretly romancing Nora's secretary Jean Davis (Pippa Scott) to get further dirt (so thinks Nora) and when Nora learns of this, well, it's just too much to bear. 

On account of there's a lot of dirt.

So Nora contrives to send Jean on a bunch of time-consuming errands, knowing she has a secret rendezvous with slimy Jerry. She follows her, then, assured they are both together at this cool-looking bookstore, drives up to Jerry's place and pours a whole can of gasoline on the carport floor, using another to make a trail to a safe spot out of sight. When Jerry's gorgeous Jaguar sports car pulls up, she strikes a match and ka-boom! That takes care of, Jerry.

Or does it? Turns out it was Jean in the car, because someone had let all the air out of one of her cute little sports car's tire and the two had switched vehicles. Enter Lieutenant Columbo, because whose car blows up on a car pad all on its own, especially with two empty cans of gasoline laying about and what, they don't have AAA?

Meanwhile, Nora has been living in a palatial bungalow on the studio lot since the happy days when her late husband, the head of the studio, built it for her. It is enormous and very well-appointed, including a little garden with a fountain and everything. But there are rumblings that new studio management want to take that all away. No fear, for Nora has managed to "meet" and romance the new owner of the studio, Frank Simmons (good old Kevin McCarthy), because she really likes her house and doesn't want to get thrown off the lot. Jerry is also beginning to suspect that Jean's death was not an accident. Nor perhaps was the death of Nora's studio-head husband.

Lt. Columbo is especially "just one more thing"-y in this installment, because he and Mrs. Columbo are set up as huge fans of Nora Chandler, so his being (supposedly) star-struck masks his keen observations, thereby keeping his prime suspect off guard. Anne Baxter is extra Anne-Baxter-y as well, chewing up the scenery, telegraphing her punches, tossing her head back when she laughs -- more on the Nefretiri side (Moses, MOSES!) than the Sophie MacDonald side (her Oscar-winning performance in The Razor's Edge). But why not? 

What's fun about this episode are the little Hollywood jokes: Columbo's car being mistaken for a clunker needed in a demolition derby scene; an Indian Chief in full regalia riding a bicycle; a cameo by Edith Head (with all her Oscars lined up on the table) who brings Columbo a clean tie. Best of all are the little references to Baxter's most famous film, All About Eve. Her character's name, Nora Chandler, may as well be Margo Channing, and her nemesis is a powerful columnist, a very, very pale comparison to Addison DeWitt, but you know what I mean.

But this is my favorite homage:

We get to watch part of an old Nora Chandler picture with Columbo on TV while he waits for Nora to finish dressing. It's a major clue. 

All is, of course, revealed craftily by the the little man in the trench coat. I will not spoil it all, because the entire first seven seasons of this fantastic show are available streaming online. "Requiem for a Fallen Star" is Season Two, Episode 5.

I defy you not to watch three more episodes right away.

This post is part of the Big Stars on the Small Screen Blogathon, hosted by How Sweet It Was. Please check out the fabulous bloggers and the amazing cavalcade of stars about whom they whom, therein.

One of the first Birthdays of the Week that ever occurred to me to post was in honor of Virginia Weidler, perhaps the most natural, funniest, most well-adjusted child actor of all. She made more than 40 pictures before the age of 16, made a brief attempt to transition to more adult roles, but decided ultimately to move on with her life.

Ginny left Hollywood in 1947, married naval officer Lionel Krisel, with whom she had two sons, Gary (a Disney executive) and Ronnie (a commercial photographer), and never looked back. She led a private, happy family life until her untimely death of a heart attack at age 41. 

I shall point you to the excellent Virginia Weidler Remembrance Society for details of her life and career and for suggestions on how to celebrate what would have been Ms. Weidler's 86th birthday.

Let's all hope ginnyfan hurries up and writes her biography already, so we can find out when she fit in a childhood bout of rheumatic fever around all those movies (see heart attack, above).

I don't know about you, but I think I'll watch The Under Pup on Friday.

Years ago, my friends and I used to play Hearts (er, at least we thought it was Hearts) and darts (we did know it was darts) at The Edinburgh Castle on Geary Street in San Francisco. The pub was a favorite because of the beer, the big wooden booths and the fact that you could select Jeanette MacDonald singing "San Francisco" off the jukebox.  And anyone who has been to an evening show at the Castro Theatre knows that when the organist plays "San Francisco" on the Mighty Wurlitzer, it means you should take your seat, shut up, and get ready for the picture.

In other words, that song and the movie it is from have been close to my heart for a very, very long time. And the person responsible for that is W.S. "One-Take Woody" Van Dyke, a man whose directorial filmography reads like the history of the art form: silent epics, westerns, documentaries, romantic comedy, historical drama, musicals, and yes, Tarzan pictures. I mean everything, including the greatest contribution to Hollywood romantic idealism ever: the pairing up of William Powell and Myrna Loy. For which I am also eternally thankful.

And for those of you who like romantic couples who sing at each other instead of drink, Van Dyke is also the engine behind the success of the team Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy.

Van Dyke was born on March 21, 1889 in San Diego, the son of an aspiring actress and a Superior Court judge, who died within a few days of his birth. To make ends meet, "Woody's" mother and he performed in vaudeville and traveling shows in and around Seattle. While still a teenager, Van Dyke worked a number of jobs, including as a lumberjack, prospector, railroad attendant, waiter, and salesman. 

His first foray into the movie business was as an assistant director to D.W. Griffith on the epic Intolerance (1916). Van Dyke quickly moved on to direct westerns and serials for Essanay and MGM, taking a quick break to fight in the Great War. By the 1930s, he had developed a reputation for bringing in films on time and under budget, without sacrificing quality or performance. Case in point: The Thin Man (1934), one of the finest romantic detective pictures of all time, was shot in 12 days for just under $250,000. He earned the nickname "One-Take Woody" on the film Daredevil Jack, by being at the ready to capture Jack Dempsey knocking out an opponent, which he was known to do with one punch, without having to reshoot.

Van Dyke was one of the few directors admired by both actors and studio executives alike. The former for his ability to draw out natural performances from his stars and to hire technicians and actors who were down on their luck; the latter for reliability and efficiency of production. 

Sadly, at the age of 50 W.S. Van Dyke was diagnosed with cancer and heart disease. As a practicing Christian Scientist, he refused medical medical care for the last several years of his life and committed suicide in 1943 at the age of 53.

In the Warner Bros. series The Adventures of Torchy Blane, the heroine is a fast-talking, fearless, ambitious, often unethical ace reporter for the New York Star. Her boyfriend is detective Steven McBride, a big gorilla who is usually one or two steps behind in solving whatever murder Torchy is pursuing. The franchise is based on a very popular detective pulp series of the 1920s and '30s by Frederick Nebel called Kennedy of the Free Press, in which the ace reporter is male, a massive drunk, and not in love with Steve McBride.

There are nine Torchy Blane pictures in all, seven of them starring Warner character slugger, Glenda Farrell, with an odd, mid-series switch to Lola Lane, then back to Farrell, then finishing up with a blonde, bangs-free Jane Wyman in the final installment. Like many hour-ish long Warner Bros. fare of the time, the pictures are minimally produced, comfortably formulaic, and zippy in the dialog department.

The ingredients of this particular formula are:

• Torchy is at or near the business end of a murder.
• Her boyfriend, Detective Steve McBride (mostly Barton MacLane), is both impressed and annoyed by her sleuthing, telling her it's man's work, etc.; she ignores him.
  
• Torchy conducts a more effective investigation using dubious or otherwise inadmissible evidence-gathering methods.
• Dopey Detective Gahagan (Tom Kennedy) does or says something adorably stupid to tell Torchy something she's not supposed to know.
• Desk Sergeant Graves (George Guhl) forgets something.
  
• We're treated to a gratuitous racist sight or language gag.
  
• Torchy has a steak.
  
• Torchy solves the case.
• Torchy or Steve stall their wedding plans.
  

The mysteries themselves aren't much, but I don't think suspense was a particularly high production priority for these dialog-driven character showcases. So attractive was Glenda Farrell's newspaperhound, that Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel was inspired to model Lois Lane on her Torchy Blane. You can see bits of Farrell in the Lois of the early comics, the few times Lois gets to say anything in the excellent 1940s Fleischer cartoons, and in Margot Kidder's Lois of the first (and my favorite) Superman (1978).

Some of these movies are better than others and most are fun and engaging with only one real clunker in the set (I'm talking to you, Torchy Blane in Panama). For my money, you can't go wrong with the first four and the last two.

As a series opener, you can't beat Smart Blonde for establishing its heroine as a driven, get-the-story-at-all-costs newshound. The first moments show Torchy in the back of a cab in hot pursuit alongside a speeding train telling the driver to pull over to the next crossing so she can jump out and swing onto the caboose with nothing but a business suit and carnation as luggage. Stopping only to straighten her skirt, she pauses to ask the conductor where to find Mr. Torgensen's compartment (she has no ticket, incidentally, just a whole lot of moxie) and plants herself across from this Mr. Torgensen, millionaire sports promoter, and charmingly interviews him about some upcoming deal. At their destination, Mr. Torgensen offers to drop Torchy at her newspaper and is promptly shot and killed right in front of her. Unfazed, Torchy runs into a phone booth (remember those?) and proceeds to dictate the whole story. And not a hair out of place.

Now THAT'S a REPORTER.

In this episode, Steve proposes to Torchy, but don't hold your breath.

• Star Sighting: Very young, very funny Jane Wyman as Dixie, the hatcheck girl.
• Favorite Lines:
  Dixie [watching McBride walk away]: "Ain't he masterful?"
  Torchy: "Yeah, all he needs is a leopard skin."

In this second installment, newly-engaged Torchy embarks on a race around the world with two other reporters, exposes a smuggling operation, and solves a murder. It's a patchwork of implausibilities that is mostly fun to watch, with a dose of creepiness in the last half hour when everyone shows up on the Hindenburg, which exploded a month before the picture was released.

• Star Sighting:  The opening credits state that Fly Away Baby came "from an idea by Dorothy Kilgallen." According to Wikipedia, the film and possibly Torchy herself were based on Kilgallen and her book Girl Around the World, which describes a very similar race. Without the smuggling and the murder, of course.
• Favorite Line:
  Torchy [trying to sell her publisher on the race story]: "A woman doing anything is the copy."

In The Adventurous Blonde, all the city reporters are jealous of Torchy constantly scooping them, so they concoct a story about a famous actor being murdered to send her on a wild goose chase. Naturally, the actor is a two-timing womanizer who turns up dead for real and Torchy winds up solving the murder, getting the story, and managing to not marry Lieutenant McBride.

• Star Sighting: A very young, very handsome William Hopper.
• Favorite Line:
  Torchy [to Steve]: "You're the one who swapped fireside for homicide."

This time the police department is annoyed that Torchy uses her connection to McBride to get hot stories. Nothing comes of it, of course, but Torchy shows a certain callousness in this one that's a little unpleasant. Still, Blondes at Work is probably my favorite because there are lots of girls in it (and not just blondes) talking to each other, to the cops, to Torchy, saying things girls are likely to say.

Torchy does some really questionable stuff in this one.

• Star Sighting: Betty Compson, heroine of the astonishingly great 1928 Josef von Sternberg film, The Docks of New York. I was not happy to learn that her voice is a bit reedy for talkies.
• Favorite Lines:
  Torchy [trying to get out of a ticket]: "I'm Torchy Blane of the Star."
  Beat Cop: "I don't care if you're an eclipse of the sun."

Just as the series hit its stride, Warner Bros. went ahead and changed up both stars with Lola Lane as Torchy and Paul Kelly as McBride. The result is a tepid treatment of the trusty formula, with very little chemistry between the new stars. This time the gang goes to Panama to investigate a New York bank robbery that involves a member of the Leopard Lodge. It's not important what happens, really, but Torchy does jump out of a plane to catch up with the ship carrying all the cops who are trying to give her the slip.

It's a game effort, but this combination of talent fails to hold up the shortcomings of the story.

• Star Sighting: Betty Compson again, for some reason, like in the last picture, but this time as a gun moll.
• Favorite Line: "Why, Steve McBride, sometimes I wonder why I'm crazy enough to think of you and me and a cottage in New Jersey all in the same day."

So this is NOT the movie where Torchy and McBride finally get married, but is instead about how Torchy exposes a con artist counterfeiter pretending to be a secret service agent who Steve thinks is on the level.

The pacing on this one is pretty slow, but there are some nice moments between Torchy and Gahagan and a German-speaking German Shepherd.

• Star Sighting: Uh, nobody.
• Favorite Lines:
  Torchy: "I'll be very secretive (accent on the second syllable)."
  Gahagan: "I don't care about that, but you gotta keep it mum."

There's very little actual Chinatown in Torchy Blane in Chinatown, and even less of the zing of previous installments. Based on the horrible Chinese pidgin Torchy used with a laundryman in Blondes at Work, this is probably just as well.

Some jade tablets are taken from a Chinese burial site and suddenly a bunch of folks are extorted and threatened with murder. Torchy figures it all out eventually, but is especially bumbling and callous in the process.

• Star Sighting: Patric Knowles, reliable second leading man for a number of high-profile pictures, including Will Scarlett in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938).
• Favorite Lines:
  McBride: "Whaddya doing on that balcony?"
  Torchy [caught snooping]: "Every time I see a balcony, the Juliet comes out in me."

Torchy exposes rampant city corruption after Boss Dolan takes over but is blocked from printing anything about it because, well, there's corruption. Also the Boss threatens the paper with a massive exodus of advertisers. When the candidate Torchy manipulates into running on a reform platform is murdered, McBride writes her in as the recall candidate for a joke.

But Torchy loves the idea and runs for mayor, promising to "make the city safe for your babies." Steve, in the meantime, foils the Boss's plot to murder Torchy, and Torchy wins the election. At her victory press conference, however, she is given a baby to hold and decides she wants to get married instead and quits.

Dames.

• Star Sighting: Directed by Ray McCarey whose other credits include Our Gang and Laurel & Hardy shorts; he is also the younger brother of feature film director, Leo McCarey.
• Favorite Lines:
  McBride: "I've got to consider which side our bread is buttered on; yours as well as mine."
  Torchy: "Oh no you don't, not our bread, not until the rice begins to fly. Until then I have my own slice to butter."

In this last installment, Torchy is played ably by Jane Wyman and Lt. Bride is taken over by the wonderful Allen Jenkins, who many of us of a certain age will recognize as the voice of Officer Dibble in Top Cat. While this pairing has much better chemistry than the last series switcheroo, the age difference between the two actors is a little too wide for serious sparks. And as spunky and fast-talking as Wyman's Torchy is, she comes across more Nancy Drew than Nellie Bly.

But I like Nancy Drew.

The dynamite in question is Torchy's getting herself thrown in jail so she can get close to gangster's girl, Jackie McGuire (Sheila Bromley), which she does. But not for long. They break out and run off to San Francisco to meet Jackie's crooked guy, with McBride and Gahagan on the trail. There's a prison fight, a wrestling match, a kidnapping, a guy named Bugsy, and a daring escape involving a speeding car.

Which is where we came in on Torchy Blane. And if you're going to end a series, you may as well go out on a good one.

• Star Sighting: Jane Wyman, again.
• Favorite Lines:
  Gahagan [reminiscing about a wrestling match]: "I was wearing purple tights, and the old Crusher was wearing..."
  McBride: "...a strait-jacket."

This post is part of Sleuthathon, The Great Classic Detective Blogathon, hosted by the excellent Movies Silently; please check out the other reviews about great film detectives, mysteries, and talented amateurs.

It's easy to picture Barbara Stanwyck as a torch-singing gangster's girl; not so a farmer's wife. And she feels exactly the same way in The Purchase Price, a pre-Code weirdie in which she plays Joan Gordon, nightclub singer and girlfriend to bootlegger, Eddie Fields (Lyle Talbot.)

After it's established that Joan has been singing up and down Broadway since she was a teenager, we see her give Eddie a very collegial brush-off, explaining that she's going to marry into society and leave all this thuggery behind. A few moments later, the chap in question calls off the wedding, because he has learned that she has been running around with Eddie, and that just won't do. So Joan grudgingly goes back to the gangster (who's already married), soon gets fed up and beats it to Montreal after seeing a picture of it in a newspaper. Unfortunately, Eddie's lackeys find her singing under an assumed name, and she has to find a way to skip town again. As it happens (and there being no handy newspaper clippings), Joan's maid is leaving to marry a Nebraska farmer whom she met through a marriage broker, but confesses that she sent Joan's picture instead of her own to sweeten the pot. Thus, with the same deliberation she gave to moving to Canada, Joan decides to trade places with the maid and marry this guy in Nebraska.

This is all in the first 10 minutes. It goes on in fits and starts from there.

The farmer turns out to be George Brent (miscast), awkward agricultural-school graduate Jim Glison, a man who expects to sleep with a woman on the first day he met and married her, then holds a grudge when she rebuffs him. Meanwhile, Joan makes a spectacular adjustment to the awful, awful circumstances, conditions, and people in her new community. She cooks, she cleans, she makes the wood stove work (see The Egg and I), and for some reason, falls in love with Sulky Jim.

There are ups. There are downs. There is an unpleasant local muckity muck who keeps trying to take over Jim's farm (and fondle Joan). Eddie turns up as well, but only to prove to the audience that Joan would have had way more fun with him. Oh, and an oddly-affecting scene in which Joan helps a neighbor woman newly-delivered of a baby and her terrified older daughter (the great Anne Shirley), who no doubt witnessed her mother giving birth. THAT's the movie I wish this had been.

The Purchase Price reminded me at times of The Canadian, the 1926 film about a city girl forced by circumstances to marry a farmer with no mod-cons (and precursor to the excellent Victor Seastrom/Lillian Gish picture, The Wind). Same 'wedding night' standoff. Same cross-cultural adjustment horrors. Same eventual reconciliation and marital harmony, if a more believable one. At other times, the film reminded me that 68 minutes can seem like four days.

All in all, an uneven, interesting picture that underscores Barbara Stanwyck's ability to make long-johns and work gloves unbelievably attractive. Also that unless the non-gangster is Gary Cooper, she should stick with the affable bootlegger.

 You know, this version of Imitation of Life  isn't as hard to watch as I remembered it being when I was in my huffy, politically-hypersensitive twenties. It's slightly more nuanced than the Douglas Sirk technicolor, soapy remake in 1959, but there does seem to be real friendship and regard -- inasmuch as one was possible -- between the white businesswoman, Bea Pullman (Claudette Colbert), and the black maid, Delilah Johnson (Louise Beavers).

The story is of two widows struggling to raise their young daughters during the Great Depression. Bea has taken over her late husband's sales route selling maple syrup door-to-door (so that's a thing). Delilah, who has no doubt always worked, meets Bea by accident her way to a job prospect and the two decide to combine resources, with Delilah working below scale as Bea's maid for room and board. Bea's daughter, Jessie (Rochelle Hudson), is a friendly if not very bright kid; Delilah's child, Peola (Fredi Washington), is a smart, sad girl who, being very light-skinned, is constantly torn by the access her lightness affords her in white society and the fact that her actual blackness forbids her that access.

One morning over Delilah's fabulous pancakes, Bea gets the idea to set up a pancake house using Delilah's secret recipe, so she can (1) stop schlepping cans of maple syrup around town and (2) cash in on the serendipity. Somehow Bea cons a lease out of a store owner, furnishes the place without paying for it, and becomes an instant success. She offers Delilah a (low) percentage of the business and lets her cook the pancakes. Also to keep cleaning the house. In spite of the imbalance in their relationship, the two women share easy conversation about men and the difficulties of raising children alone, particularly when one isn't very sharp and the other is tormented by racial prejudice.

Enter Elmer Smith (Ned Sparks), cigar-chewing businessman, who also knows a good thing when he sees one, who convinces Bea to expand "Aunt Delilah's Pancake House" into an "Aunt Delilah's Pancake Flour" empire. Well, that makes everybody rich and happy. Except Peola, who has been passing for white at every opportunity only to be thwarted when her mother comes to visit and confuses everyone when she calls People her baby. Bea is forever shocked at how mean Peola is to her mother. I'm not the biggest Claudette Colbert fan, but I really like the way she delivers on sticking up for Delilah in this picture.

Now happily rich and successful, Bea meets handsome playboy ichthyologist Stephen Archer (Warren William), a friend of Elmer's, who is a huge step up from syrup salesman. The two fall in love and decide to marry, but first he must meet Jessie, who happens to be home from college and who is unaware of their plans. Jessie promptly falls in love with Steve (because, Warren William) which makes Bea break off their engagement to spare Jessie's feelings. 

Meanwhile, Peola has left the negro college and plans to live as a white person, telling her mother that she must let her go and never acknowledge her. This, of course, finally breaks Delilah's heart and she takes to her bed, calling for Peola as she eventually dies in despair. The money Delilah eschewed from the business to buy her own house is spent on the biggest funeral in Harlem, where Peola shows up sobbing and begging forgiveness.

Outcome: Peola goes back to the negro college and Bea makes sure that Steve knows that eventually Jessie will get over him and they can't pick up where they left off. So, that's those problems of vastly different orders of magnitude solved.

There's a lot in this version of Imitation of Life  about class, race, gender, and relationships than perhaps the film originally meant to say. For one thing, Fredi Washington was actually a mixed-race actress, not a white one playing mulatto as was the custom. And for another, the kinds of things the two widows talk about -- love, kids, work -- ring very true of things women in their circumstances would discuss. It's very worth seeing if you haven't in a long while.

George Brent was born in Ireland to an Irish mother and a British father, who was either in the British Army, a shopkeeper, or a newspaperman (mysterious inconsistency among the biographies). Brent was orphaned at the age of 11 and moved to New York to live briefly with an aunt. After returning to Dublin as a young man, he became an active member of the IRA where, during the Irish War of Independence, he got into some trouble and had to escape to Canada to avoid being arrested.

Brent got the acting bug while a student at the National University of Ireland and joined a Canadian theatre company while in exile. Eventually, he made his way to New York where he appeared in stock plays and early silent films, also picking up the first of five wives, actress Helen Campbell (1925-27). In 1930, Brent went to Hollywood to appear in minor supporting roles to the likes of Rin-Tin-Tin and Charlie Chan, and to fail a few screen tests. Thanks to actress Ruth Chatterton, who would become his second wife (1932-34), Brent landed a leading role in her film, The Rich Are Always With Us (1932). 

And the rest is leading man history. 

1932 would see George Brent play opposite some of the strongest leading ladies of the time: Barbara Stanwyck, Loretta Young, and Joan Blondell, Throughout the 1930s and into the early 1940s, he was one of Hollywood's most durable leading men, playing opposite such heavy hitters as Kay Francis, Ginger Rogers, Greta Garbo, Jean Arthur, Myrna Loy, Merle Oberon, and Ann Sheridan (wife number four, 1942-43*). His most frequent co-star (11 pictures) was, of course, Bette Davis, with whom he also had a years'-long love affair.

By the late 1940s, an aging Brent found fewer romantic leads and spent a few years appearing in B pictures before retiring from film in 1953. He made a number appearances on television until retiring for good to his California horse ranch in 1960...with wife number five, model Janet Michaels (1947-1974) whom he survived. Brent died at the age of 80 of emphysema on May 26, 1979.

I like George Brent best when he's a rake or a playboy. His noble, long-suffering do-gooder parts tend to leave me cold, with the notable exception of his portrayal of Dr. Steele in Dark Victory, but only because he puts up with Humphrey Bogart's horrible Irish accent so effortlessly.

But I can watch him in Jezebel any day; he really is a perfect scoundrel.

Harold Ribotsky was the youngest of seven children born to Polish -Jewish parents in Brooklyn, New York. His father was a property developer who lost his fortune in the 1929 market crash. Chester began his long and industrious career as a delivery boy, Wall Street runner, newsboy, magician's assistant, and painter before trying his hand at acting. He appeared in the Broadway premier of Dead End using the stage name "Hally Chester" as one of the "Dead End Kids," and later turned up in the 1937 film by the same name. 

For the remainder of the 1930s, Chester played various street urchins, thugs, and petty criminals in B serials as a "Little Tough Guy" or an "East Side Kid." Shortly after WWII, Chester purchased the rights to Joe Palooka, a popular comic strip, and made the switch from film actor to producer, changing his name to the more adult sounding "Hal E. Chester." He cranked out 11 Joe Palooka pictures between 1946 and 1951 and went on to produce a number of B crime dramas, including The Underworld Story (1950) with my pal, Dan Duryea, and Crashout (1955) with William Bendix and my girlfriend, Beverly Michaels.

Chester also produced the science fiction classic, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), which featured an atomic-test-generated giant lizard thingy (precursor to the highly trademarked Japanese version whose name I can't afford to mention) and Ray Harryhausen's stop motion animation.

In 1955, Chester moved to England to work on internationally co-produced films, which included the very spooky Jacques Tourneur film Night of the Demon in 1957 and a number of well-regarded comedies.

Hal E. Chester retired in 1970 and remained in London until his death on March 25, 2012 at the age of 91. His was an interesting, varied, and oddly prolific career.