New to me: 276 (191 pre-1970, 54 post-1970)

Rewatches: 46 (24 pre-1970, 22 post-1970)

Total: 322 (215 pre-1970, 76 post-1970)

TCM: 141 (7 rewatches)

Library: 50 (9 rewatches)

Personal DVD: 48 + 1 VHS (26 rewatches)

YouTube: 15

Netflix: 30 (4 rewatches)

Other (Redbox, website): 4

Gone With the Wind (1939)

Around the World in 80 Days (1956)

Gentleman's Agreement (1947)

1. Public Wedding (1937) - Jane Wyman & William Hopper
2. The Hardy's Ride High (1939) - Mickey Rooney
3. Five Came Back (1939) - Lucille Ball, Chester Morris, C. Aubrey Smith
4. *Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) - James Stewart & Jean Arthur, Claude Rains, Thomas Mitchell
5. Brother Rat and a Baby (1940) - Ronald Reagan & Jane Wyman, Wayne Morris & Priscilla Lane, Eddie Albert
6. Flight Angels (1940) - Dennis Morgan, Wayne Morris, Ralph Bellamy, Jane Wyman, Virginia Bruce
7. Bad Men of Missouri (1940) - Dennis Morgan, Wayne Morris, Jane Wyman, Arthur Kennedy
8. Bewitched (1945) - Edmund Gwenn, Phyllis Thaxter
9. The Razor's Edge (1946) - Tyrone Power & Gene Tierney, Anne Baxter, Clifton Webb, Herbert Marshall, John Payne
10. Crisis (1950) - Cary Grant, Jose Ferrer
11. *Monkey Business (1952) - Cary Grant & Ginger Rogers, Charles Coburn, Marilyn Monroe, Hugh Marlowe
12. I Love Melvin! (1953) - Debbie Reynolds & Donald O'Conner
13. Lucy Gallant (1955) - Jane Wyman & Charlton Heston, Thelma Ritter, Claire Trevor, Edith Head
14. Lizzie (1957) - Eleanor Parker, Richard Boone, Joan Blondell (and Johnny Mathis!)
15. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) - Gregory Peck
16. *Groundhog Day (1995) - Bill Murray & Andie McDowell
17. Tommy Boy (1995) - Chris Farley & David Spade
18. Blind Dating (2006) - Chris Pine
19. Star Trek (2009) - Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelkhin, Leonard Nimoy
20. Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013) - Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Benedict Cumberbatch, Karl Urban
21. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014) - Chris Pine & Keira Knightly, Kevin Costner
22. Star Trek Beyond (2016) - Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg

1. Merrily We Live (1938) - Constance Bennett, Brian Aherne, Billie Burke, Bonita Granville
2. Blues in the Night (1941) - Priscilla Lane, Jack Carson, Elia Kazan
3. The Sea Wolf (1941) - Edward G. Robinson, Ida Lupino, John Garfield 
4. Madame Bovary (1949) - Jennifer Jones, Van Heflin, Louis Jourdan
5. Painting the Clouds with Sunshine (1951) - Dennis Morgan, Virginia Mayo, S.Z. Sakall
6. The Silver Chalice (1954) - Virginia Mayo, Paul Newman, Pier Angeli 
7. Ransom! (1956) - Glenn Ford & Donna Reed, Leslie Nielsen 
8. The Big Country (1958) - Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Charlton Heston, Burl Ives
9. *The Pink Panther (1964) - Peter Sellers, David Niven, Capuchine, Robert Wagner
10. Luv (1967) - Jack Lemmon, Peter Falk
11. Wait Until Dark (1967) - Audrey Hepburn
12. Ice Station Zebra (1968) - Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine
13. U-571 (2000) - Mathew McConaughey, Bill Paxton
14. Man On Fire (2004) - Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning
15. Dream House (2011) - Daniel Craig & Rachel Weisz
16. Z for Zachariah (2015) - Margot Robbie, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Chris Pine
17. The Huntsman: Winter's War (201) - Charlize Theron, Emily Blunt, Chris Hemsworth
18. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) - Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck, Amy Adams, Gal Gadot (I probably would have stopped this partway through but I wanted to see Gadot as Wonder Woman because her stand-alone movie comes out this June... co-starring Chris Pine ;) Watch the trailer here - it's set during WWI.)

 

The pivotal idea of the picture is concerned with a young woman named Norma Phillips, whose good looks attract the attention of Butch Saunders, a thick-skulled sleuth. It is somewhat of a surprise to him when he is told by Webb that the sweet young thing had escaped from the Chicago police after being arrested for the murder of Therme Roberts. Norma succeeds in eluding Saunders for a while, but subsequently he finds her through a ruse, which is also instrumental in helping her to prove her innocence of the crime and to point to the actual murderer.

Bette Davis does well as Norma and Allen Jenkins makes the most of the role of a gum-chewing detective whose strong point is certainly not grammar.

Just why and how Bette Davis enters the picture never quite rings true. But there she is and she must be accepted.

Bette Davis is attractive and capable as Joan.

Davis' unusual coiffure and smart deportment helps a lot.

Another enormously effective portrayal is that of Bette Davis as Mildred Rogers, the waitress who continually accepts Carey's generosity and hospitality and reveals herself as a heartless little ingrate. In a climactic episode, which recalls an incident in Kipling's "The Light That Failed," this sorry specimen of humanity slashes Carey's efforts at art, destroys his medical books and furniture and, in the film, even burns his bonds and private papers, leaving the apartment as though it had been struck by a tornado.

At the first showing yesterday of this picture the audience was so wrought up over the conduct of this vixen that when Carey finally expressed his contempt for Mildred's behavior applause was heard from all sides. There was a further outburst of applause when the film came to an end.

It develops early in the picture that Mr. Devlin and Miss Garfield (otherwise George Brent and Bette Davis) would be using a Mr. and Mrs. by-line were it not for Devlin's oft-repeated assertion that women are bum news-paper men.

That Bette Davis has been unable to match the grim standard she set as Mildred in "Of Human Bondage" is not to her discredit. In "Dangerous," the new film at the Rivoli, she tries again. Except for a few sequences where the tension is convincing as well as deadly she fails.

As Joyce Heath (the name inviting inevitable though irrelevant comparison with that of Barnum's fabulous crone), once a "vitally tempestuous creature." Miss Davis portrays an actress toppled by a rather esoteric jinx....During its course the blonde is vicious, coy and excellently almost-hysterical. Best under taut restraint. Miss Davis is least satisfactory when lines lead her to be sputtery and even tearful. 

Toward the middle, the dialogue is stripped and biting; and several fine closeups—the photography is by Ernie Haller—help immensely.

 Say this for Miss Davis: she seldom lets down.

Bette Davis is the understanding woman of the world, wise in her true estimates of the fickleness of men. The role is a distinct departure from the heavier type of things which she usually plays, and she reveals a fine sense of comedy.

This just misses sock proportions. That’s due to an anti-climactic development on the one hand, and a somewhat static character study of the Dixie vixen, on the other.

Against an 1852 New Orleans locale, when the dread yellow jack (yellow fever epidemic) broke out, the astute scriveners have fashioned a rather convincing study of the flower of Southern chivalry, honor and hospitality. Detracting is the fact that Bette Davis’ ‘Jezebel’ suddenly metamorphoses into a figure of noble sacrifice and complete contriteness.

Bette Davis won an Academy award last year for her performance in "Jezebel," a spottily effective film. Now it is more than ever apparent that the award was premature. It should have been deferred until her "Dark Victory" came along, as it did yesterday to the Music Hall. Miss Davis is superb. More than that, she is enchanted and enchanting. Admittedly it is a great role—rangy, full-bodied, designed for a virtuosa, almost sure to invite the faint damning of "tour de force." But that must not detract from the eloquence, the tenderness, the eartbreaking sincerity with which she has played it. We do not belittle an actress to remark upon her great opportunity; what matters is that she has made the utmost of it.

 Miss Davis, naturally, has dominated—and quite properly—her film.

As the old maid, Miss Davis has given a poignant and wise performance, hard and austere of surface, yet communicating through it the deep tenderness, the hidden anguish of the heart-broken mother.

Alert to the opportunity, Miss Davis and Mr. Boyer put all the "soul" they possess into the playing of the principal roles. Under the slow-paced direction of Anatole Litvak, they carry through mainly on one somber key—Miss Davis with her large eyes filled with sadness and her mouth drooping heavily with woe, Mr. Boyer with his face a rigid mask, out of which his dark eyes signal pain.

As word had passed along the grapevine, this was the picture in which Bette Davis, the Duse of Warners, had let her back hair down and given vent to the animal spirits repressed in a long line of lead-heavy roles. And the answer is that as the comic sparring partner of James Cagney, no slouch himself, Miss Davis has taken the bit in her teeth and flung her breathless way through a rough-and-tumble comedy with no gags barred.

So furiously has she joined the fray that comically speaking she has "o'er-leaped the horse," landing, as luck would have it, on a cactus bed where it does the least harm. But after the bleak tragedies of the past, who can hold the pendulum back—or would care to? Let a lady have some fun.

As we were intimating, "The Bride Came C. O. D." is neither the funniest comedy in history nor the shortest distance between two points. But for the most part it is a serviceable romp in which Mr. Cagney, as usual, gives better than he takes, George Tobias steals a scene or two and Miss Davis can learn her comic ABC's. Next time we hope she'll relax a little and not take her fun quite so strenuously.

In handing Davis a comedy assignment, Warners go all out in also making her the victim of continual physical and mental violence. She’s dirtied up in a mine; acquires three doses of cacti needles in periodic falls; and even exposes her posterior as target for well-directed shots from Cagney’s improvised slingshot.

Davis clicks strongly as the oil heiress, displaying a flair for comedy.

Miss Davis's performance in the role which Talluluh Bankhead played so brassily on the stage is abundant with color and mood. True, she does occasionally drop an unmistakable imitation of her predecessor; she performs queer contortions with her arms like a nautch-dancer in a Hindu temple, and generally she comports herself as though she were balancing an Academy "Oscar" on her high-coiffed head. But the role calls for heavy theatrics; it is just a cut above ten-twent'-thirt'. Miss Davis is all right.

One palm should be handed Bette Davis for accepting the secondary role of the secretary, and another palm should be handed her for playing it so moderately and well.

Apparently the Warners were afraid that Bette Davis's role in "The Man Who Came to Dinner" would inspire for their mordant Duse a bit too much public sympathy. Miss Davis was far too agreeable as Sheridan Whiteside's patient secretary. So the Burbank Brothers have quickly cast the young lady back into one of her familiar characterizations of an out-and-out trouble-making shrew. And that is what she plays, as poisonously as only she can.

But Miss Davis, by whom the whole thing pretty much stands or falls, is much too obviously mannered for this spectator's taste. "I'd rather do anything than keep still," she bitterly complains at one point. And that's the truth; she is forever squirming and pacing and grabbing the back of her neck. It is likewise very hard to see her as the sort of sultry dame that good men can't resist. In short, her evil is so theatrical and so completely inexplicable that her eventual demise in an auto accident is the happiest moment in the film.

Although it carries a professional bedside manner, "Now, Voyager," Bette Davis's latest tribulation at the Hollywood, contains not a little quackery. For two hours of heartache and repeated renunciation, Miss Davis lays bare the morbidities of a repressed ugly duckling who finally finds herself as a complete woman.

Miss Davis plays the young woman, high-lighting her progress to emotional maturity with the decision and accuracy of an assured actress.

The Warners were out to give Miss Davis another workout over an emotional obstacle course—and they have done so in a film paralleling, as closely as possible, her and Miss Hopkins'"The Old Maid." Only the obstacles erected in this one are pointless and contrived, and the emotion generated is as phony as a spray-gun sweat.

Under the circumstances, Miss Davis' acting, in her customary style, is fluid and full of contrivance—but it doesn't mean a thing. Only when she dresses up expensively, as a forty-ish woman of the world, with a curiously lacquered complexion and a streak of gray in her hair, does character coincide with performance. Both are artificial then.

Never, in our recollection, has Miss Davis devoted so much work to a character of so little importance as the one she plays in this film. And never has make-up borne so plainly the dramatic responsibilities of a show...There is little or nothing to the character which Miss Davis vigorously plays.

Miss Davis' performance is impressive: you have to give it that. She plays a siren with all the stops out and in thirty years of styles of women's clothes. Unfortunately, the style of her lady doesn't change perceptibly—particularly the voice, which is probably the most monotonously affected one you'll ever hear.

The understandable ambition that every actress must feel to play dual roles in a movie, thus multiplying her presence by two, has been ratified by Bette Davis on her own histrionic behalf in her first self-produced Warner picture, "A Stolen Life," which came to the Hollywood yesterday. But a friend of Miss Davis who has generally found her thoroughly sufficient in single roles must observe that she has proved no advantage by playing her dramatic vis-à-vis.

But then it appears that the writers and director were not too much concerned with logic so long as they provided a tandem vehicle for Miss Davis' show. And a show she does give, beyond question. As the Snow White sister she is bland, wistful, introverted—the sort of character she usually plays when put upon. As Rose Red, she swaggers, talks boldly and generally behaves toward herself the way Miriam Hopkins has been noted to behave toward her—or she to ward others—in the past. Indeed, the direct juxtaposition of Miss Davis' two familiar types of roles, with herself—expertly photographed, incidentally—playing both of them, inclines to disconcert. The trick is too patent to be illusory, the situation too theatrically contrived.

Bette Davis is a competent actress, or so we've been led to believe, but they'd better start giving her good stories—or soon we'll be led to forget.

That... is all "Deception" is intended to do— give Miss Davis an opportunity to act a harassed and love-tortured dame. That she does, with such coiling of her body and rotating of her eyes as has become entirely familiar in the more unrestrained things that she plays. But the outcome of her performance still leaves her entirely unrevealed.

 ~ NY Times

 

It has been to long since Bette Davis or Robert Montgomery has played straight comedy that the pleasure of seeing them both in "June Bride," playing it gaily, may be just a matter of change. But we wouldn't say so—not entirely. Rather we're inclined to suspect that they have a delightful vehicle in this little comedy-romance at the Strand. Though it isn't precisely a chef-d'oeuvre of humorous invention on the screen, it makes for refreshing entertainment, as they play it, and it will do till a chef-d'oeuvre comes along.

Maybe we owe Miss Davis and Mr. Montgomery our special gratitude for playing a couple of smart worldlings with a lovely talent for the comic touch, for timing a line or a gesture to the micrometric dot.

Of all the no-good women that Bette Davis has portrayed in her numerous elaborate demonstrations of the deadliness of the female sex, she has never done any more unpleasant nor more grotesque than the creature she plays in the Warners'"Beyond the Forest," which came to the Strand yesterday. This time she's not only a mean one: she's a callous and calculated fiend whose flamboyant selfishness and cruelties are on a virtually extra-human plane. As a matter of fact, she is so monstrous—so ghoulishly picturesque—that her representation often slips off into laughable caricature.

We cannot imagine that King Vidor, her director, desired this last to be, but we strongly suspect that he was working to make her look just as vicious as he could. For not only has he accepted a thoroughly denigrating script, but he has harshened and uglified Miss Davis so that she's as repulsive as a witch in a cartoon. 

Not to be coy about it, we can see no "Oscars" in the offing for this film.

The performance of Miss Davis as the mother who discombobulates the lives of her daughter, her husband and her brother just to gratify her vanity and whims is uncomfortably complicated and alien to the lowly locale. Though made up to look a middle-aged slattern, Miss Davis gives the role the air of a gentlelady who has come down a little in the world and deliberately uses had grammar, with some effort and considerable shame. Underneath her rolls of fat and dowdy dresses beats the heart of a peevish granddame.

Joan Crawford and Bette Davis make a couple of formidable freaks in the new Robert Aldrich melodrama, "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?"

As the mobile one [Davis] who is slowly torturing to death the helpless sister whose fame as a movie actress eclipsed her own as a child vaudeville star, she shrieks and shrills in brazen fashion, bats her huge mascaraed eyes with evil glee, snarls at the charitable neighbors and acts like a maniac. Indeed, it is only as a maniac that her character can be credited here—a sadly demented creature who is simply working out an ancient spite.

Well, Bette Davis is back—all over town, in fact...Her mammoth creation of a pair of murderous twin sisters...is great fun to watch.

Miss Davis does not let them down. She puffs, pants, pouts and pops her eyes with all the professional relish she can muster. It is sheer cinematic personality on the rampage, in a performance that, while hardly disscreet, is certainly arresting. Deadly as her films may be, Bette Davis, the star, is very much alive.

 

1. Arsene Lupin (1932) - John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Karen Morley
2. Bureau of Missing Persons (1933) - Pat O'Brien & Bette Davis
3. Mama Steps Out (1937) - Alice Brady, Dennis Morgan (as Stanley Morner)
4. Maisie (1939) - Ann Sothern & Robert Young
5. Mademoiselle Fifi (1944) - Simone Simon
6. The Time, the Place and the Girl (1946) - Dennis Morgan & Jack Carson, Martha Vickers, Janis Paige, S.Z. Sakall, Alan Hale
7. A Double Life (1947) - Ronald Colman
8. Too Young to Kiss (1951) - June Allyson & Van Johnson, Gig Young
9. When in Rome (1952) - Van Johnson, Paul Douglas
10. *Mister Roberts (1955) - Henry Fonda, William Powell, Jack Lemmon, James Cagney
11. The Virgin Queen (1955) - Bette Davis, Richard Todd, Joan Collins
12. Sea Wife (1957) - Richard Burton & Joan Collins (post coming soon)
13. *The Wackiest Ship in the Army (1960) - Jack Lemmon, Ricky Nelson, John Lund
14. The V.I.P.s (1963) - Richard Burton & Elizabeth Taylor, Louis Jourdan, Rod Taylor & Maggie Smith, Margaret Rutherford, Orson Welles
15. From Russia with Love (1963) - Sean Connery, Pedro Armandariz (my first classic Bond film)
16. *Ocean's Eleven (2001) - George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Andy Garcia, Matt Damon
17. *Ocean's Twelve (2004) - George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Catherine Zeta Jones, Matt Damon
18. *The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004) - Anne Hathaway, Julie Andrews, Chris Pine
19. *The Devil Wears Prada (2006) - Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt
20. *The Young Victoria (2009) - Emily Blunt & Rupert Friend
21. Unstoppable (2010) - Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario
22. People Like Us (2012) - Chris Pine, Elizabeth Banks, Olivia Wilde
23. Horrible Bosses 2 (2014) - Don't judge me, I only watched it because it happened to be on TV, meaning it was a "clean" version, and it has Chris Pine in it
24. The Light Between Oceans (2016) - Michael Fassbender & Alicia Vikander, Rachel Weisz
25. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016) - Eva Green
26. Mission Impossible 5: Rogue Nation (2016) - Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner

Doris was everybody's darling and I wish I could have done fifty more pictures with her. 

Jim and I worked together only twice, in Move Over, Darling and The Thrill of It All. He's so good at what he does... I felt married. We didn't see each other much over the following years, but we've stayed friends because we talk on the phone regularly. I don't know how, because Jim hates the telephone. I usually have to call him. "Can't you pick up a phone?" I say, but he just grumbles.

We had fun. He's a marvelous actor. He's very real when he talks to you. He's so funny and so nice, I just love him. Even though he broke two of my ribs. Jim, if we don't speak for a while, I forgive you for breaking my ribs. Both of them. Don't give it another thought.

Doris didn't play sexy, she didn't act sexy, she was sexy. And then she could take a sexy scene and make you laugh. Which is better in the bedroom than a lot of things. And Doris was a joy to work with. Everything she did seemed effortless. She's so sweet and so professional - she made everyone around her look good.

I think Doris is a very sexy lady who doesn't know how sexy she is. That's an integral part of her charm... I don't think she could have had the success she's had if she didn't have this sexy whirlpool frothing around underneath her All-American-girl exterior.

I remember the first time I saw her on screen. I was just a regular moviegoer then, hadn't turned to acting yet, and here was this new girl, Doris Day, on a train with Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson [It's a Great Feeling (1949)], singing a song, and I looked at her and said to myself, "Oh, God, ain't that beautiful, and listen to that voice!"

I've had to play love scenes with a lot of screen ladies, but of all the women I've had to be intimate with on the screen, I'd rate two as sexiest by far - Doris and Julie Andrews, both of them notorious girls next door. Playing a love scene with either of them is duck soup because they communicate something sexy which means I also let myself go somewhat and that really makes a love scene work.

One other thing about acting with Doris - she was the Fred Astaire of comedy. You know the way Astaire used to change partners but the dancing was always uniformly spectacular because Astaire just did his thing and anybody who danced with him was swept up by it. Well, same thing about Doris. Whether is was Rock Hudson or Rod Taylor or me or whoever - we all looked good... I used to come to the set with a preconceived notion of how I was going to play a particular scene, but when I saw what Doris was doing in the scene, her tempo, her feel for the scene, 99.9 percent of the time I'd toss my pre-conception away and play it with her. Making a movie with Doris was a piece of cake - a sexy ride on her coattails all the way.

If Doris Day was the national symbol for the All-American girl, then Jim was her male counterpart - somewhere between a steelworker and a Saturday afternoon football hero.