Memories of the 2011 TCM Classic Film Festival

*This article originally appeared on Movie Morlocks, Turner Classic Movies’s official blog in May 2011 (The blog was discontinued years ago and is no longer available)

In the event-packed hurly burly of TCM’s second annual Film Festival in Los Angeles from April 28-May 1 of 2011, I didn’t have a chance to blog about all of the films or attending guests that I saw but here are a few that linger in the memory and deserve to be singled out –cinematographer/director Haskell Wexler, who participated in a Q&A with Leonard Maltin before a screening of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?(1966), Hayley Mills, who appeared after a screening of Whistle Down the Wind (1961) with interviewer/author Cari Beauchamp, a midnight screening of The Mummy (1932) introduced by Boris Karloff fan Ron Perlman, Buster Keaton’s The Cameraman (1928) accompanied by a live orchestra score by Vince Giordano and His Nighthawks, the MoMA restoration print showing of 1933’s Hoopla (Clara Bow’s final film) and the underrated Ernst Lubitsch Pre-Code delight Design for Living (1933).

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The Dirty Little Coward Roadshow

After recently rewatching I Shot Jesse James on DVD from Criterion’s Eclipse label, I couldn’t get a certain scene out of my head. As you may know, this 1949 film is Samuel Fuller’s directorial debut about Robert Ford, the “dirty little coward” who assassinated the frontier legend in 1882 and the scene that pops out occurs not long after Jesse (played by Reed Hadley) is dead and buried. Ford (John Ireland) begins performing re-enactments of the event on stages for money as he travels around capitalizing on his notoriety. At first, I thought this was just a fantasy from Fuller’s fevered, pulp fiction imagination but after doing some research it appears to be true. Robert Ford really did take his act on the road, billing it as “Outlaws of Missouri,” and, night after night before paying audiences, he would act out that fateful day when he shot Jesse James. 

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Aline MacMahon in Heat Lightning

Publicity portrait of Aline MacMahon in the 1930s.

Most classic movie fans know Aline MacMahon as the wise-cracking Trixie in Gold Diggers of 1933, the devoted wife of Guy Kibbee in William Keighley’s film version of Babbitt (1934) or the victimized heiress in George B. Seitz’s Kind Lady (1935). These were stand-out roles but she was usually relegated to supporting parts, especially during her contract years at Warners Bros. With her Irish/Russian ancestry, MacMahon was not a conventional leading lady but she had an offbeat beauty that was both soulful and melancholy. These qualities, plus a steely toughness and dry sense of humor, make her performance in Heat Lightning (1934) particularly memorable. It also marked her first film in a leading role after playing character parts in 12 movies.   Continue reading