Monthly Archives: March 2011

The Secret Six

Jean Harlow stars in “The Secret Six” from 1931, her first credited feature role.  This violent gangster film features Wallace Beery, Clark Gable and Lewis Stone.  Although Beery was a major star playing tough guys for 4 decades in Hollywood … Continue reading

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Music for Silent Movies

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival recently got together with SFJazz to sponsor a showing of Charlie Chaplin’s 1921 film “The Kid.”  Marc Ribot played guitar at the event, held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts here in … Continue reading

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An Earlier Maltese Falcon

I watched the 1931 version of the Maltese Falcon, starring Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade, and Bebe Daniels as Ruth Wonderly.  This one features a nicer, friendlier version of Sam Spade, who seems genuinely capable of falling in love with the Wonderly … Continue reading

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Norman Wisdom

Because of my interest in the Rank Organisation, I watched a service comedy tonight from 1958 called “The Square Peg,” starring Norman Wisdom and Honor Blackman.  Wisdom stars as Norman Pitman, a British council road builder during World War II … Continue reading

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The Westerner

William Wyler’s “The Westerner,” made by the Samuel Goldwyn Company in 1940, stars Walter Brennan as hanging Judge Roy Bean, who was based on a real person that idolized British actress Lily Langtry.  Brennan’s Bean hangs horse thieves in a desolate … Continue reading

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