Search Results for "old hollywood"

In this program, a wealthy and famous, but not terribly successful, film actress of the 1930s, Adela Shannon, suddenly becomes a widow when her husband is accidentally killed by a moving sightseeing bus. Due to a suit to contest her husband's will, Shannon is left penniless. She devises a means to keep herself in the standard of living to which she has grown accustomed: Shannon intends to blackmail her three ex-husbands with a book written by her sister, Bill. The book contains information none of her former spouses would want made public. Meanwhile, Bill thinks that it would be better to publish the book instead. Unfortunately, she decides this after Shannon has placed the manuscript in her safe. Luckily for Bill, however, Shannon's butler is an expert thief who happens to know a thing or two about breaking into safes.

The Old Settler is the story of two middle-aged sisters, Elizabeth and Quilly, who share an apartment in Harlem in 1943. The sisters quarrel amiably, but they share a wounded history that becomes revealed as the tale unfolds. An earnest but unworldly young man named Husband travels up from the South to board with the sisters while he searches for his beloved Lou Bessie, who left their small town a few years back to find a new life. Husband would like to bring Lou Bessie back home, but she's enamored with the excitement of the city, and her plans are more complicated. In time, Elizabeth and Husband begin a courtship that may or may not overcome their considerable age difference, while Quilly reacts disapprovingly.

Network television executive Gavin hopes to reunite celebrated Hollywood stars Piper Grayson, Kate Westbourne, and Addie Holden in a TV special after their 1960s movie musical Boy Crazy is re-released. Though the three women share the same agent, Gavin's seemingly insurmountable obstacle is that they all cannot stand each other.

Los Angeles, 1969. TV star Rick Dalton, a struggling actor specializing in westerns, and stuntman Cliff Booth, his best friend, try to survive in a constantly changing movie industry. Dalton is the neighbor of the young and promising actress and model Sharon Tate, who has just married the prestigious Polish director Roman Polanski…

A tale of outsized ambition and outrageous excess, tracing the rise and fall of multiple characters in an era of unbridled decadence and depravity during Hollywood's transition from silent films to sound films in the late 1920s.

In 1927 Hollywood, a silent film star falls for a chorus girl just as he and his paranoid screen partner struggle to make the difficult transition to talking pictures.

In a hospital on the outskirts of 1920s Los Angeles, an injured stuntman begins to tell a fellow patient, a little girl with a broken arm, a fantastic story about 5 mythical heroes. Thanks to his fractured state of mind and her vivid imagination, the line between fiction and reality starts to blur as the tale advances.

When a Hollywood star mysteriously disappears in the middle of filming, the studio sends their fixer to get him back.

Hollywood, 1927: As silent movie star George Valentin wonders if the arrival of talking pictures will cause him to fade into oblivion, he sparks with Peppy Miller, a young dancer set for a big break.

Private detective Philip Marlowe becomes embroiled in an investigation involving a wealthy Californian family after a beautiful blonde hires him to track down her former lover.

No description available for this movie.

An intimate portrait and saga of four film pioneers--Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack who rose from immigrant poverty through personal tragedies persevering to create a major studio with a social conscience.

1930s Hollywood is reevaluated through the eyes of scathing social critic and alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as he races to finish the screenplay of Citizen Kane.

Chronicles the life of William Haines, Hollywood's first openly gay movie star, who sacrificed his career to live openly with his lover.

Hollywood, 1930s. Tod Hackett, a young painter who tries to make his way as an art director in the lurid world of film industry, gets infatuated with his neighbor Faye Greener, an aspiring actress who prefers the life that Homer Simpson, a lone accountant, can offer her.

A visit to a Hollywood nightclub, featuring caricatures of, among others, Walter Winchell, Hugh Herbert, W.C. Fields, Katharine Hepburn, Ned Sparks, Johnny Weissmuller, Lupe Velez, John Barrymore, Harpo Marx, George Arliss, Mae West, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Clark Gable, Edna May Oliver, Gary Cooper, The Dionne Quintuplets, Groucho Marx, Helen Morgan, Wallace Beery, Edward G. Robinson and George Raft.

Lewis Tater writes Wild West dime novels and dreams of actually becoming a cowboy. When he goes west to find his dream he finds himself in possession of the loot box of two crooks who tried to rob him.

The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) caused a great impression on the lives of most of the American artists of that era, so many movies were made in Hollywood about it. The final defeat of the Spanish Republic left an open wound in the hearts of those who sympathized with its cause. The eventful life of screenwriter Alvah Bessie (1904-1985), one of the Hollywood Ten, serves to analyze this sadness, the tragedy of Spain and its consequences.

The career of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo is halted by a witch hunt in the late 1940s when he defies the anti-communist HUAC committee and is blacklisted.

A glamorous film star rebels against the studio, her pushy press agent and a family of hangers-on.

This short promotes the premise that movies often create a demand for the fashions seen in them. It starts with a vignette in rural America. A mother and daughter go to town to buy a new dress. In the dress shop window is a designer dress worn by Joan Crawford in a recent movie. We then go to Hollywood and visit Adrian, MGM's chief of costume design, and see how multiple copies of a single clothing pattern are produced. The film ends with short segments of several MGM features.

Comedy special spotlighting Tracey Ullman’s larger than life character Ruby Romaine from HBO's Tracey Takes On (1996–1999). After an illustrious career, veteran Hollywood makeup artist Ruby has decided to call it quits. Or has she? In her makeup trailer, Ruby tells a series of hilarious tales and explains why she reconsidered her retirement. With Debbie Reynolds, Jane Kaczmarek.

Basically this is a commercial for Hollywood's Lido Lounge and for MGM contract players. The Lido is a large watering hole; we visit one afternoon with an orchestra playing, all sorts of stars and would-be stars sitting at tables near the pool alongside paying customers, and bathing beauties parading and diving. The Lido's manager, Reggy Denny, introduces the stars in the audience. He's sometimes interrupted by someone who does a bit, sings a song, or otherwise entertains: most of these are novelty acts. By the end, everyone's having a swell time.