Our first Diana Wynyard Acteurist Oeuvre-view presents us with a couple of politically reactionary pre-Codes: Wynyard's Hollywood debut, Rasputin and the Empress (1932), which is mostly Rasputin (a very freaky Lionel Barrymore), not much Empress (Ethel B), and almost no Wynyard; and her Hollywood triumph, Cavalcade (1933), Noël Coward's version of the Modernist recoil from the 20th century. We find much to discuss in these movies' tortured relationship with recent history.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: RASPUTIN & THE EMPRESS (1932) [dir. Richard Boleslawski]

0h 29m 03s: CAVALCADE (1933) [dir. Frank Lloyd]

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

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In this 1948 Studios Year by Year episode, we look at two artefacts from Dory Schary's brief tenure as Head of Production at RKO, Berlin Express (directed by Jacques Tourneur), an early Cold War curiosity in which Robert Young and Merle Oberon try to save Paul Lukas from the clutches of Nazis in war-torn Frankfurt, and The Boy with Green Hair (directed by Joseph Losey), the pacifist fantasy, starring Dean Stockwell and Pat O'Brien, over which Schary clashed with the Elon Musk of studio-era Hollywood, Howard Hughes. We discuss the films' historical context, as well as the non-political pleasures they have to offer.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: The RKO Story summary of 1948 at Radio-Keith-Orpheum

0h 05m 08s: BERLIN EXPRESS [dir. Jacques Tourneur]

0h 24m 19s: THE BOY WITH GREEN HAIR [dir. Joseph Losey]

0h 46m 49s: Listener mail with Amy

Studio Film Capsules provided by The RKO Story by Richard B. Jewell & Vernon Harbin

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joe W. Finler

Link: For 'KL': The Boy With The Green Hair

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* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

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Sadly, it's time to say goodbye to another acteur after an all-too-short time. For our final Paul Robeson episode, we watched Julien Duvivier's Tales of Manhattan (1942), which notoriously brought an end to Robeson's career as a film actor, and two extraordinary socialist documentaries to which he contributed his voice, Leo Hurwitz's Native Land (1942) and Joris Ivens' The Song of the Rivers (1954). (Note that Robeson's contribution to Song of the Rivers was less than we supposed going in: an introductory song only. But we thought it paired well with Native Land anyway.) We make an argument for the subversive use of tropes in the Robeson Tales of Manhattan segment before moving on to discuss Robeson's involvement in the kind of cinema he wanted to make: independent, socialist, artistically ambitious. And finally, we of course Rank the Robesons, giving our 10 favourite Robeson films in order and summarizing the experience of building a comprehensive picture of this under-theorized body of work.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: TALES OF MANHATTAN (1942) [dir. Julien Duvivier]

0h 21m 54s: NATIVE LAND (1942) [dirs. Leo Hurwitz & Paul Strand]

0h 53m 33s: SONG OF THE RIVERS (1954) [dir. Joris Ivens]

1h 04m 48s: Ranking the Robesons

1h 13m 58s: Listener mail from Andy

Episode specific reading:

· Musser, Charles. Paul Robeson and the End of His ‘Movie’ Career. Cinémas, Volume 19, (Number 1), Fall 2008, 147-179.

· Klein, Jill and Michael. Native Land: An Interview with Leo Hurwitz. Cinéaste vol 6 (number 3), 1974.

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

This 1948 20th Century Fox Studios Year by Year episode is a doozy, a doubleheader of psychotic lovelorn men with bad ideas in their heads. First, in Jean Negulesco's rural noir Road House, Richard Widmark's spoiled road house owner selects Ida Lupino's unlikely and unforgettable femme fatale as his reluctant assassin, and then, in Preston Sturges' black comedy Unfaithfully Yours, Rex Harrison's celebrated symphony conductor spins murderous melodramatic fantasies and faces a recalcitrant slapstick reality when he suspects his much younger wife (Linda Darnell) of cheating on him. We unpack the practically infinite riches of these colossi of studio-era filmmaking, one with and one without an auteur at the helm.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: ROAD HOUSE [dir. Jean Negulesco]

0h 50m 02s: UNFAITHFULLY YOURS [dir. Preston Sturges]

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Films of Twentieth Century-Fox by Tony Thomas & Aubrey Solomon

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joe W. Finler

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* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

Part 1 of our Oscar Levant Special Subject sees us explain our very personal relationship with this singular figure of 1940s/50s Hollywood in preparation to discuss Gershwin biopic Rhapsody in Blue (1945), great Warner Bros. woman's picture/noir Humoresque (1946), Doris Day debut Romance on the High Seas (1948), and accidental Fred and Ginger reunion pic The Barkleys of Broadway (1949). Just a warning: if you're looking for an in-depth discussion for the latter two, this probably isn't the podcast episode you want. But if you're more interested in the relationship between Rhapsody in Blue and Humoresque (thanks to the contributions of screenwriter Clifford Odets), you've come to the right place. Levant adds his unique texture and authenticity to these stories of the cost of genius—for both the genius and those around them.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: Scraping the Surface of Oscar Levant

0h 11m 58s: RHAPSODY IN BLUE (1945) [dir. Irving Rapper]

0h 36m 43s: HUMORESQUE (1946) [dir. Jean Negulesco]

0h 57m 57s: ROMANCE ON THE HIGH SEAS (1948) [dir. Michael Curtiz]

1h 11m 14s: THE BARKLEYS OF BROADWAY (1949) [dir. Charles Walters]

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

For our penultimate Paul Robeson Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode we watched Thornton Freeland's Jericho (1937), in which Robeson plays a court-martialed WWI officer who takes up a new life as the leader of a group of Saharan herders and traders, and Pen Tennyson's The Proud Valley (1940), often cited as the film Robeson was proudest of, about the struggles of a community of Welsh miners. As in our last Robeson episode, he really makes his auteur presence felt in these films, although in almost opposite ways, taking centre stage in Jericho and acting as the presiding genius of The Proud Valley, which we discuss as both Robeson's vision of socialism and a mining horror movie.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: JERICHO (1937) [dir. Thornton Freeland]

0h 28m 48s: THE PROUD VALLEY (1940) [dir. Pen Tennyson]

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

For this 1948 Warner Bros Studios Year by Year episode, we watched a couple of the studio's most prestigious releases for the year, John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Jean Negulesco's Johnny Belinda. We explore some extraordinary performances by Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, and Jane Wyman in these tales of capitalist nihilism and rural prejudice.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE [dir. John Huston]

0h 44m 11s: JOHNNY BELINDA [dir. Jean Negulesco]

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Warner Brothers Story by Clive Hirschhorn

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joe W. Finler

+++

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

For our 2024 Halloween Special Subject we watched two films in the German Expressionist tradition starring one of the greatest actors to be relegated to Hollywood character actor status, Peter Lorre: Fritz Lang's masterpiece M (1931), through which Lorre came to international recognition playing a child murderer, and Lorre's first Hollywood film, Karl Freund's Mad Love (1935), to which he also brought his special blend of pathos and perversion. We discuss serial killers, scapegoats, sadism, cyberpunk zombies, love, sex, and other topics certain to terrify.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: M (1931) [dir. Fritz Lang]

0h 32m 07s: MAD LOVE (1935) [dir. Karl Freund]

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!