Sunday, January 15

Goodbye

The time has come to draw a curtain on the blog.  I know it seems rather sudden and in a way it is.  However, I have been thinking about it for some time now but one thing or another finds me back at the computer pounding out something new.

The blog began 12 years ago.  I can say that after all this time I am finally running out of things to say.  I have covered most all of the movies I've wanted to cover and written pieces on most all of the personalities I wanted to write about.  I have never been particularly interested in writing about any time frame other than Hollywood's Golden Age.  Writing about today's movies or current actors, actresses, directors or others holds little interest for me.  One can read about them anywhere.

In addition to this there are some other things I want to do which I have been unable to do and won't be able to do if the blog continues.  It is simply too time-consuming to leave room for anything else beyond the day-to-day routine.

Movies have consumed my life since I was a young child.  As some of you know, they originally started as a safe haven from the fighting around my house.  When things got really rough, my mother gave me fifty cents and shoved me out the door and told me to head to our neighborhood theater.  After awhile I seemed to need movies like I needed food and water and air.  After a couple of years of weekend movies (and mainly double features), if my mother said we were going somewhere as a family for a day, I wanted to ask her if she wouldn't rather stay home and fight.  I needed my fix.

Writing about them has provided some of that same delirious joy I felt as a child but I also find much of it watching them on television these days with all the resources that are available.  How lovely it will be to watch one after another after another and not say oh yeah, what about the blog?  

I want to add that much of the joy of writing the blog comes from hearing from so many of you.  You've made me think, you've taught me much, you've made me laugh and I have loved how much some of you have loved movies and know so much about them.  I will sincerely miss hearing from you.

Thank you so much.  It's been one of my favorite things I have ever done.

See you at the movies.

Rob




Tuesday, January 10

Visiting Film Noir: The Big Sleep

1946 Film Noir
From Warner Bros
Directed by Howard Hawks

Starring
Humphrey Bogart
Lauren Bacall
Martha Vickers
Dorothy Malone
John Ridgley
Regis Toomey
Sonia Darrin
Peggy Knudsen
Charles Waldron
Bob Steele
Elisha Cook Jr.
Louis Jean Heydt
Joy Barlowe
Theodore von Eltz

Thursday, January 5

Ann Miller

She was a whirling dervish as a tap dancer.  I thought she was one of the fastest, most energetic female tappers I had ever seen.  She always looked like she was having a great time, that big, toothpaste smile never leaving her face.  She loved making movies and she adored Hollywood.  She may have been one of its best goodwill ambassadors.  Too bad they didn't regard her as highly as she did them.