Film History

Hollywood’s business is the merchandising and recycling of myth — especially the myth of the tragic Hollywood star (Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, etc.) in biopic or documentary form.

The emergency lights flickered on and off. I found myself 30 feet in the air hanging onto the edge of a railing.

It is hard to believe now, but in the early 1960s, the young, long-haired Liverpudlian lads John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr (known collectively as the Beatles) …

When I was growing up in the 1960s, the entertainer Danny Kaye seemed to be everywhere — today traveling the world on behalf of UNICEF, tonight hosting his own CBS …

Sixty years after its premiere in June 1954 in Japan, of all places (New York and Los Angeles followed in July), ‘On the Waterfront’ is still regarded as a seminal …

Cover Girl (1944) is a famous movie for two reasons — one intentional and the other accidental. The film’s legacy is of a time when women were celebrated for their …

When I was a child, I had childish dreams to be a superhero or a pro athlete. Alas, my only super power was secondary perception, the ability to say, after …

I am a graduate teaching assistant in Professor Alan Downer’s Twentieth-Century Theatre class at Princeton University in 1968. Along with several hundred students and a handful of other TAs, I …

Eighty years after its February 22 premiere, ‘It Happened One Night’ remains one of the best films Hollywood has ever made.

The 1970s were years of change for me. I was pregnant with my first child and struggling with the decision to either give up a career that I had worked …