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By Raymond Benson

Only serious film history aficionados and perhaps viewers of Turner Classic Movies will be aware that there was once a live-action version of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland adapted by Hollywood in the early pre-code years. It was released in 1933 by Paramount and directed by Norman Z. McLeod, the guy who had helmed the Marx Brothers’ comedies Monkey Business (1931) and Horse Feathers (1932). McLeod would go on to make such titles as It’s a Gift (1934), Topper (1937), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), and The Paleface (1948).

The production of Alice in 1933 boasts a screenplay by none other than heavyweights Joseph L. Mankiewicz and William Cameron Menzies, the man behind Things to Come and a production designer whose hands were all over Hollywood and British productions over the next two decades. The script also borrows heavily from the popular and then-current stage production written by Eva La Gallienne and Florida Friebus,...

Join Cinema St. Louis for their free online movie club! Since we can’t watch a film together on the big screen, Cinema St. Louis invites you to come together to share our love of cinema from the comfort of your own home. Every other week Cinema St. Louis will select a film available on a streaming service and host the discussion on Facebook.

Cinema St. Louis will be hosting an Online Screening of It Happened One Night this Monday (May 19th) at 7:30pm(Ct). Diane Carson, Ph.D., professor emerita, and reviewer of films for more than 25 years, covering Cannes, Telluride, Toronto, Palm Springs, and Sundance festivals, will be talking about the film on Facebook Live. For more details go to the Facebook invite Here

It Happened One Night concerns an heiress, Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) who runs away from her father to join her new husband, society...

Great new for fans of pre-code crime films. The 1932 Rarity The Roadhouse Murder is now available on DVD From Warner Archives

Overeager cub reporter Chick Brian (Eric Linden) thinks he has the story that will land him the front-page byline of his dreams when he snaps a picture of a diamond smuggler in a most candid situation. Unfortunately for the hapless Chick, it only lands him in hot water with his editor, Jeff Dale (Roscoe Karns), because the smuggler is the mistress of their publisher. With his story killed, Chick heads to the countryside with his girlfriend, Mary (Dorothy Jordan), but the couple becomes stranded by a sudden rainstorm, causing them to seek shelter inside the Lame Dog Inn. While drying off, they hear a gunshot and come across a murder scene, where they confront criminal Fred Dykes (Bruce Cabot) and his moll, Louise (Phyllis Clare). Louise convinces the deadly...

If you’re a baseball fan, particularly if you’re a Dodgers, Astros, Cubs or Yankees fan, the real baseball season started this past Friday with the inauguration of the American and National League Championship Series. I’m a Dodgers fan, which means I’m among that group who, arguably, have gone the longest without the satisfaction/excitement/nail-biting terror of seeing their team in the World Series, the next step for whoever wins in the Nlcs. The Dodgers last appeared in the World Series in 1988, capping a memorable run with a championship by beating the Oakland A’s. That was 29 years ago. The Cubs are the reigning Mlb champions, having won last year’s World Series after a 107-year drought. And the Yankees, a mainstay of the World Series around the turn of this century, last appeared in an October championship series in 2009.

The only team to come close...

A happy discovery! This is a major late- silent-era gem on the order of Von Sternberg’s Docks of New York — a special treat that will please fans of director William Wellman — he revisited parts of it in a later talkie. It’s also a key movie in our education/adoration of the maverick actress Louise Brooks, the erotic sensation too hot and too independent for Hollywood.

Beggars of Life

Blu-ray

Kino Classics

1928 / B&W / 1:33 Silent Aperture / 81 min. / Street Date August 22, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Wallace Beery, Richard Arlen, Louise Brooks, Blue Washington, Roscoe Karns, Robert Perry, Guinn ‘Bog Boy’ Williams.

Cinematography: Henry Gerrard

Film Editor: Alyson Shaffer

Assistant Director: Charles Barton

Music: The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra

Written by Jim Tully and Benjamin Glazer from a novel by Jim Tully

Produced by Jesse L. Lasky, Adolph Zukor, William A. Wellman

Directed by William A. Wellman

Director...

The restoration of a newly rediscovered director’s cut of the 1931 The Front Page prompts this two-feature comedy disc — Lewis Milestone’s early talkie plus the sublime Howard Hawks remake, which plays a major gender switch on the main characters of Hecht & MacArthur’s original play.

His Girl Friday / The Front Page

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 849

Available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date January 10, 2017 / 39.96

His Girl Friday:

1940 / B&W /1:37 flat Academy / 92 min.

Starring Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart, Porter Hall, Ernest Truex, Cliff Edwards, Clarence Kolb, Roscoe Karns, Frank Jenks, Regis Toomey, Abner Biberman, Frank Orth, John Qualen, Helen Mack, Alma Kruger, Billy Gilbert, Marion Martin.

Cinematography Joseph Walker

Film Editor Gene Havelick

Original Music Sidney Cutner, Felix Mills

Written by Charles Lederer from the play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur

Produced and Directed by Howard Hawks

The Front Page:...

Stars: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly, Roscoe Karns, Jameson Thomas, Alan Hale, Arthur Hoyt, Blanche Friderici | Screenplay by Robert Riskin | Directed by Frank Capra

Spoiled but spirited socialite Ellie (Claudette Colbert) flees her privileged life commandeered by her overbearing father and ends up sharing a bus ride across America with cynical, hard-drinking newspaperman Peter (Clark Gable). If you think you know how that story ends you’re probably right, but audiences in 1934 wouldn’t have seen the inevitable romantic and comedic scenes coming; we may be used to the road-trip, odd-couple romance by now (it’s practically a subgenre all by itself), but It Happened One Night was the first of its kind.

Following a row aboard her father’s boat, Ellie dives into the harbour and enlists the help of an older woman so that she can buy a Greyhound bus ticket cross-country to Miami. The motivation behind...

Depraved convicts ! Crazy Manhattan gin parties! Society dames poaching other women's husbands! A flimflam artist scamming the uptown sophisticates! All these forbidden attractions are here and more -- including Bette Davis's epochal seduction line about impulsive kissing versus good hair care. It's a 9th collection of racy pre-Code wonders. Forbidden Hollywood Volume 9 Big City Blues, Hell's Highway, The Cabin in the Cotton, When Ladies Meet, I Sell Anything DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1932-1934 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 63, 62, 78, 85, 70 min. / Street Date October 27, 2015 / available through the WBshop / 40.99 Starring Joan Blondell, Eric Linden, Humphrey Bogart; Richard Dix, Tom Brown; Richard Barthelmess, Bette Davis, Dorothy Jordan, Berton Churchill; Ann Harding, Robert Montgomery, Myrna Loy, Alice Brady, Frank Morgan; Pat O' Brien, Ann Dvorak, Claire Dodd, Roscoe Karns. Cinematography James Van Trees; Edward Cronjager; Barney McGill; Ray June Written by Lillie Hayward, Ward Morehouse, from his play; Samuel Ornitz, Robert Tasker, Rowland Brown...

Gary Cooper movies on TCM: Cooper at his best and at his weakest Gary Cooper is Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” star today, Aug. 30, '15. Unfortunately, TCM isn't showing any Cooper movie premiere – despite the fact that most of his Paramount movies of the '20s and '30s remain unavailable. This evening's features are Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Sergeant York (1941), and Love in the Afternoon (1957). Mr. Deeds Goes to Town solidified Gary Cooper's stardom and helped to make Jean Arthur Columbia's top female star. The film is a tad overlong and, like every Frank Capra movie, it's also highly sentimental. What saves it from the Hell of Good Intentions is the acting of the two leads – Cooper and Arthur are both excellent – and of several supporting players. Directed by Howard Hawks, the jingoistic, pro-war Sergeant York was a huge box office hit, eventually earning Academy Award nominations in several categories,...

The above exchange from Frank Capra's romantic gem It Happened One Night doesn't necessarily give you any insight into the plot. Without the knowledge of what came before, or the visual of Claudet Colbert as spoiled sophisticate Ellie Andrews warily climbing into the car with the man she's traveled alongside from Florida to New York City, the joke probably doesn't pack much of an umph. But once you've seen this 1935 Best Picture winner as many times as I have, you never know which lines will jump out and make you laugh more than you previously did in the past. It Happened One Night is one of those wonderful Hollywood accidents. Neither Colbert nor her co-star, Clark Gable, were the first choices for the lead roles. In fact, it wasn't until Colbert won for Best Actress that she publicly thanked Capra for making the film (despite not even attending the Oscars,...

Winner of five Oscars, Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night remains an outstanding entertainment, and a touchstone of Hollywood’s most enduring cinematic genre: the Romantic Comedy. Filled with naughty, cloying sexuality and a lovable slate of archetypal characters, the film encapsulated the aspirations and desperations of 1930s America, even while evoking giggles of delight from a battered audience facing a dark and uncertain future. While the Great Depression is never addressed directly, the pressures of those days infuse every aspect of It Happened One Night, from its depiction of pampered, frivolous one per-centers to its array of dodgy conmen, hapless working stiffs and penniless drifters. The fact that love continued to find a way through the world’s political and economic maelstroms was a comforting notion in 1934; a notion perfectly suited to Capra’s trademark optimistic populism.

The film’s stagebound, talky exposition scene may feel awkward at first,...

“Well you’ve shown me an excellent example of the hiking part. When does the hitching come in?”

Frank Capra’s 1934 film It Happened One Night was the first film to win the Oscar “grand slam” (Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director and Screenplay) and is considered a pioneer of the screwball comedy genre. Lucky St. Louisans will have the chance to see it on the big screen when it plays next Saturday, February 8th at The Hi-Pointe Theater at 10:30am as part of their Classic Film Series.

It Happened One Night concerns an heiress, Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) who runs away from her father to join her new husband, society aviator King Westley (Jameson Thomas). On the bus, she meets a reporter named Peter Warne (Clark Gable) who is down on his luck. The strike a bargain: Peter can have an exclusive on Ellie’s story...

We love a chamelonic director here at The Playlist, and Howard Hawks was one of the first, and one of the best. Across a 55-year career that spanned silents and talkies, black-and-white and color, Hawks tackled virtually every genre under the sun, often turning out films that still stand as among the best in that style. Romantic comedy? Two of the finest ever. War? "To Have And Have Not" and "Sergeant York," the latter of which won him his only Best Director Academy Award nomination (though he did win an Honorary Award in 1975, two years before his death). Science-fiction? The much ripped-off "The Thing From Another World." Gangster movies? "Scarface," which practically invented a whole genre. From film noir and melodrama to Westerns and musicals, Hawks took them all in his stride.

The filmmaker famously said that the secret to a good movie was "three great scenes and no bad ones,...

It Happened One Night (1934) Direction: Frank Capra Cast: Claudette Colbert, Clark Gable, Walter Connolly, Roscoe Karns Screenplay: Robert Riskin; from Samuel Hopkins Adams' short story "Night Bus" Oscar Movies Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, It Happened One Night By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica: It is a very rare thing when a light-hearted comedy, something that is quintessentially the stuff of a "good movie," breaches into that territory where the term "good film" can also be applied, but Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934), adapted by Capra's longtime collaborator Robert Riskin from Samuel Hopkins Adams' short story "Night Bus," may be such an exception. Today, most people know Capra solely for his rediscovered classic It's a Wonderful Life, made a dozen years later, but It Happened One Night was his first stab at what most critics would label greatness. The fact that the film is a comedy is all...