Monday, February 25, 2019

The Bigamist 1953




This is a “B” blue plate special served up nicely by the director and star Ida Lupino. Largely ignored by audiences and critics alike when it was first released, it never the less played at a first run movie theatre in Times Sq. The plot is the title, and was a daring movie for the time. In it Edmond O’Brien is a successful salesman of freezers and lives a nice life in San Francisco in a snazzy mid 50’s apartment  with his wife Joan Fontaine who also helps out with the business. All is well with their marriage except she wants to have children and can’t so they decide to adopt. They meet up with Edmund Gwenn who runs an adoption agency and things look good for them until they have to agree to an investigation that makes O’Brien turn white. Without giving too much away, Gwenn discovers that O’Brien is living a double life in Los Angles with Ida Lupino and their infant son. A serious problem for all concerned and in a flashback O’Brien lays out his heart and story to Gwenn who is hard and not generally moved by the tale. The film is short at 80 minutes and laid out in an A,B, C format by Lupino with some nice off the wall touches. Lupino and O’Brien meet cute on a tour bus through Beverly Hills, you know the one that takes tourists past the homes of the rich and famous movie stars, and we are treated to some chit chat from O’Brien on how much he loves movies and one of the homes they pass belongs to none other than Edmund Gwenn. This is one of the jokes in the movie that refers to Gwenn and his most famous role playing Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th street, and at another point O’brien refers to the Gwenn character as Santa Claus.I could have done without these.  Lupino and O’Brien hit it off in a mild sort of way, and you begin to wonder why he is playing her up since he is in a good marriage. It turns out that he is lonely being on the road and so is Lupino who works as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant, I love this touch. Lupino is finally getting some respect for the movies that she directed, hard little punches to the stomach and she is also quite good as the 2nd wife, sensitive and believable. Filmed on location in L.A. which gives the film a nice lived in feel. The transfer is ok, not great.  

Saturday, February 23, 2019

stanley donen 1924-2019







Wednesday, February 20, 2019

oddball magazine february 2019

Tuesday, February 19, 2019

Collage February 2019


Saturday, February 16, 2019

Bruno Ganz 1941-2019


Thursday, February 14, 2019

February 2019 collage


Tuesday, February 12, 2019

Tomi Ungerer 1931-2019




Friday, February 08, 2019

Albert Finney 1936-2019







Monday, February 04, 2019

Julie Adams 1926-2019





Friday, February 01, 2019

February 2019 mixed


january 2019







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