Golden Age of Hollywood Reference List

This post contains links to all of the entries in my Golden Age of Hollywood series.

I will update each Wednesday with the current week’s post.

Enjoy!

Birth of the Talkies

• Introduction:  The Beginning and the End
• February 21, 1930:  Garbo Talks!  Anna Christie (1930)
• Garbo As Garbo Mata Hari (1931), Queen Christina (1933), Camille (1936)
• The King of Hollywood Mutiny On The Bounty (1935)
• More Stars Than There Are In Heaven Grand Hotel (1932)
• Cheap Thrills Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
• The Eighth Wonder of the World King Kong (1933)

A Toothless Code

• Down Hollywood’s Primrose Path The Divorcée (1930)
• Beer and Blood and Grapefruit Little Caesar (1930), The Public Enemy (1931)
• If It Doesn’t Fit… A Free Soul (1931)
• “Dirty, Rotten, Sordid, and Cheap” Hell’s Angels (1930)
• Shock Value Scarface (1932)
• Sleeping Your Way To The Top Baby Face (1933), Red-Headed Woman (1932)
• You Don’t Know Joan Possessed (1931)
• Wild Wild West She Done Him Wrong (1993)
• (You Won’t) See Jane Swim The Tarzan Movies (1932-1942)
• Before and After Red Dust (1932), Mogambo (1953)

Screwing Around

• Silver Linings My Man Godfrey (1936), Bringing Up Baby (1938)
• The Walls of Jericho It Happened One Night (1934)
• The Good Life You Can’t Take It With You (1938)
• Carole Lombard: One In A Million Twentieth Century (1934)
• The King of Hollywood Meets the Screwball Queen No Man of Her Own (1932), Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941)

The Case for Barbara Stanwyck

• Stella Dallas (1937): Barbara’s Four Hanky Smash
• The Lady Eve (1941): “I Need Him Like the Axe Needs the Turkey”
• Double Indemnity (1944): The Crown Jewel of Film Noir
• Christmas In Connecticut (1945): “The Things a Girl Will do for a Mink Coat”
• Sorry, Wrong Number (1948): Zero for Four
• The Thorn Birds (1983): One Last Thrill

The Greatest Year in Movies

• Dark Victory (1939): “Prognosis Negative”
• The Women (1939): Jungle Red Claws
• We Interrupt 1939 to Bring You Rebecca (1940): The Unlikely Triumph of the Second Mrs. DeWinter
• Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939): Clarissa Explains it All
• In Name Only (1939): Crying Clowns
• The Wizard of Oz (1939): “No Place Like Home”
• Stagecoach (1939): Enter Johns Wayne and Ford
• Scarlett and Melanie: Film’s First Frenemies Gone With the Wind (1939)

The Fabulous Forties

• Mrs. Miniver (1942): Prestigious Propaganda
• The Philadelphia Story (1940): Triumph of the Transatlantic Accent
• Gaslight (1944): Driving Ingrid Crazy
• Miracle on 34th Street (1947): Believe In Santa
• Mildred Pierce (1945): Crawford at a Crossroads
• Gilda (1946): Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption
• East Side, West Side (1949): The Real Housewives of 1940’s New York

The Shrew Who Would Not Be Tamed

• Bette Davis: The Shrew Who Would Not Be Tamed Of Human Bondage (1935), Dangerous (1935)
• Jezebel (1938): “Triumph of Bitchery”
• The First Divine Feud: Bette and Miriam The Old Maid (1939), Old Acquaintance (1943)
• Mr. Skeffington (1944): Ugly Bette
• The Great Lie (1941): Bette Cedes the Spotlight
• All About Eve (1950): “A Bumpy Night”

Remake Rumbles

• Waterloo Bridge (1931) vs. Waterloo Bridge (1940)

Hitch and Grace In Three Acts

• Act I: Dial M For Murder (1954): Hitch Finds His Muse
• Act II: Rear Window (1954): The Apex
• Act III: To Catch A Thief (1955): A Romp Through the Riviera
• A Hitchless Coda: High Society (1956): The Tail of a Shooting Star

From Page to Screen

• A Lost Lady (1934): This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

More Films

• My Favorite Wife (1940): The Charm of Cary and Irene
• “By the time you read this letter, I may be dead.” (Letter From An Unknown Woman (1948))
• Hedy Lamarr: Cursed by Beauty
• Swing Time (1936): Dancing With the Real Stars
• Notorious (1946): Hollywood’s Longest, Sexiest Kiss
• The Other Love (1947): “Rage Against the Dying of the Light”
• Laura (1944): Seduced by a Corpse
• Indiscreet (1958): Ingrid’s Triumphant Return
• Leave Her to Heaven (1945): Tainted Love and Daddy Issues

Five Films To Get You Started

If I’ve piqued your interest on classic films but you don’t where to start, you can’t go wrong by beginning with these five stellar films. If you don’t love these, then classic Hollywood films are not for you.

• The Philadelphia Story (1940)
  • Katharine Hepburn’s funniest–and best–film. Also Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, and the best script in Hollywood history
• The Lady Eve (1941)
  • Barbara Stanwyck tortures poor Henry Fonda in this tale of her revenge between losing and regaining his love.
• Casablanca (1942)
  • Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, Bergman walks into Bogie’s.
• All About Eve (1950)
  • Bette Davis at her absolute best. As relevant today as it was seventy years ago.
• Rear Window (1954)
  • Hitchcock directs Grace Kelly, the cool blonde that got away.

Sources

Actor/Actress/Director Biographies

• Possessed: The Life of Joan Crawford, Donald Spoto
• Clark Gable: A Biography, Warren G. Harris
• Screwball: The Life of Carole Lombard, Larry Swindell
• Stanwyck, Axel Madsen
• Starring Miss Stanwyck, Ella Smith
• Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis, Ed Sikov
• A Talent for Trouble: The Life of Hollywood’s Most Acclaimed Director, William Wyler, Jan Herman
• Cary Grant: A Biography, Marc Eliot
• Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and his Leading Ladies, Donald Spoto
• High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly, Donald Spoto
• Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud, Shaun Considine

Cinema History and Film Essays

• Sin In Soft Focus: Pre Code Hollywood, Mark Vieira
• The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking In The Studio Era, Thomas Schatz
• A World of Movies: 70 Years of Film History, Richard Lawton
• The Noir Style, Alain Silver and James Ursini
• American Cinema of the 1930s, Edited by Ina Rae Hark
• American Cinema of the 1940s, Edited by Wheeler Winston Dixon
• American Cinema of the 1950s, Edited by Murray Pomerance