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WALT’S WORLD (concluded) by Graham Hill By the 1950’s, animation certainly was not a priority at the Disney studio anymore. Live-action movies and television were dominant, with “geniuses” Bill Anderson and Bill Walsh running those divisions, of course with Walt’s occasional supervision. Disneyland was what he lived for, and ten years after it opened […]
WALT’S WORLD (continued) By Graham Hill He’s a genius at using someone else’s genius is how one animator long ago, described Walt Disney. But to the public – Walt did it all! In all of Hollywood, the Disney studio was unique and special, in that it only ever had and continues to have one single star […]
WALT’S WORLD (continued) by Graham Hill In creating his vision, Walt Disney had a lot, and I mean a lot, of help. Good help, like Arthur Harold Babitsky –- better known as Art Babbitt. (above) The man who animated the Wicked Queen in Snow White, Geoppetto in Pinocchio, the mushrooms in Fantasia and the stork […]
WALT’S WORLD (continued) by Graham Hill The Disney studio’s first career milestone was Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie in 1929. Not the first sound cartoon, but the first to have a post-synchronized soundtrack of dialogue, music and sound effects. Disney’s chief rivals at the time were the Fleischer brothers Max and Dave. Working out of […]
Walt’s World –Not Always Living The Dream! By Graham Hill We talk about some people and even ourselves as being in our own world – well if there was ever someone who spent his whole life in his own world – it’s Walt Disney. Unlike all the rest of us though, he would not just […]
Hello, everybody. Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here today to speculate about the five-year-marriage of Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles, the second of her five trips to the altar, the second of his three. Was it the inevitable result of his uncontrollable lust for then American’s favorite pinup? Was it a […]
You probably have your own list of the best western films ever made. We do too. Hello, everybody. Joe Morella and Frank Segers here to discuss the Best Westerns ever made. Twentieth Century Fox’s underrated 1950 “oater” — The Gunfighter starring Gregory Peck — is our opening salvo. John Griggs in The Films of Gregory Peck says […]
Towards the end of his life, George Sanders was hell to interview. In a late Sixties exchange with critic Rex Reed, he was asked about which of his leading ladies he most enjoyed working with. Was Bette Davis, his costar in 1950’s All About Eve (which won the dyspeptic Sanders a best supporting actor Oscar) […]
Last week we ran a photo of Liberace, one of the most dazzling stars of Hollywood –although he made only one major film (see below) — posing with Susan Hayward, and our star of the week. Hello, everyone. Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, back again. Behind the Candelabra, the recent HBO […]
One definition of a classic movie might be that it is still discussed fifty years after its release. Hello, everybody. Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here at the old stand. Recently one of Joe’s favorite columnists, The New York Times writer David Brooks, began his column with, As every discerning person knows, […]