HAPPY BIRTHDAY — To Us!

Hello everybody. This is MISTER Joe Morella — and –along with me, my pal Frank Segers (age before beauty in this billing). Welcome to our Classic Movie Chat, and to your personal classic movie forum as well.

Those were the immortal opening lines of our very first blog published exactly a year ago. Yes, April 4 marks Classic Movie Chat’s first birthday.  And what we wrote then certainly applies today.

We will be featuring brand new chats five days each week accompanied by a fascinating photo or two, either a rarely seen vintage photograph from our personal collection or a photograph never before seen anywhere. 

It’s our goal to have our daily chats referred to as a great classic movie source, a friendly and congenial place where we can all get together often and share our enjoyment of the incomparable array of great films and the stars who made them classics.

As you can tell by our opening line (calling Norman Maine!), we are passionate movie buffs who enjoy nothing more than having fun with the lines and images
that jump forth from so many wonderful movies of, let’s say, a certain age.

So, fasten your seat belts … yeah, yeah, yeah .… and join us here as often as you can. 

We are delighted to report that since we wrote those lines, an increasing number of readers have taken up our invitation.

Most satisfying is hearing back from so many really informed correspondents, some with movie blogs of their own. Their comments, views, corrections and criticisms have been enormously helpful to us, and we now fashion blogs individually addressing as many reader emails as we can. So, please, keep those cards and letters coming.

Our very first photo offering a year ago showed Marlon Brando as Napoleon in 1954’s Desiree, an elaborate costume spectacle from 20th Century Fox which costarred Jean Simmons and Merle Oberon as the Empress Josephine. Brando was seen greeting a real emperor, Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, who was visiting the movie set at the time. (Above is another shot of Brando, always an interesting guy to look at, with a woman who somehow looks familiar.)

Joining us on a fairly regular basis in our first year was guest contributor Larry Michie whose brief at the Classic Movie Chat continues to be tracking the often treacherous and mystifying journey of books made into movies. His blogs are tagged BOOKS2MOVIES, and should not be missed.

Also joining us from time to time is veteran Hollywood journalist Hy Hollinger, whose first person accounts and interviews offer rare sources of information about a wealth of movies and stars. Our profound thanks go to Larry and Hy. 

So it’s onward and upward into our second year. We have lots of exciting blogs in the hopper, some deliciously scandalous star revelations on tap — so by all means stay tuned.