Born in South Pasadena, CA in 1905, Joel McCrea is not a legendary name amongst today’s general populace despite having made in excess of 100 movies that include many classics equaling those of such Hollywood contemporaries as Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn, and Clark Gable. It may be that McCrea’s decision to concentrate almost exclusively on westerns in the fifties (24 films) and early 60s negatively affected his legacy. He’d demonstrated a comic as well as dramatic flair in the 30s and 40s, working with such master directors as Alfred Hitchcock, Preston Sturges, George Stevens, William Wyler, and Cecil B. DeMille.
As David Shipman wrote in The Great Stars: The Golden Years, “Joel McCrea was one of the leading Leading Men of the 30s, a tall, good-looking, reliable actor without any great pretension. Physically, he was not unlike Gary Cooper…” He had no illusions and told the Evening Standard he never attempted acting: “A placid sort of fellow, that’s me…” Shipman added that, “McCrea didn’t reach the heights because he didn’t really want to.”
McCrea’s best movies include:
The Most Dangerous Game (1932). You would not be wrong to discern jungle sets that were used again in 1933’s King Kong. In Most, McCrea’s 
Bob Rainsford survives a South Seas Island shipwreck and becomes the guest of Count Zaroff (Leslie Banks), who hunts the most dangerous game, aka man. As a big game hunter, Rainsford provides Zaroff with a special prey, and Fay Wray, about to achieve cinema immortality in Kong, was the appropriately named and lovely Eve, to become Zaroff’s prize—if he succeeds in his nefarious activity.
Despite a restrictive Production Code that wouldn’t be implemented until 1934, Bird of Paradise (1932) was notorious for McCrea’s nude underwater swim scene with the equally unclothed and aptly named Luana (Dolores Del Rio).
In 1933 McCrea married a Hollywood leading lady of repute: Frances Dee. Her films include Little Women, Souls at Sea, If I Were King, and I Walked with a Zombie. McCrea and Dee were married until his death in 1990.
These Three (1936) was based on a Lillian Hellman play but skirted the issue of lesbianism in its account of a student (Bonita Granville) falsely accusing two of her teachers (Miriam Hopkins and Merle Oberon) of indiscretion. The object of their desire: Joel McCrea’s physician.
Dead End (1937) top-billed Sylvia Sidney and McCrea in one of the decade’s socially conscious gangster movies. This is the film that introduced the “Dead End Kids” to the cinema and became a major stepping stone to stardom for Humphrey Bogart as “Baby Face” Martin, a criminal. McCrea was the ostensible hero, an out-of-work architect and youthful chum of Martin who needed to make a terrible decision regarding his one-time friend.
Union Pacific (1939) was one of director Cecil B. DeMille’s better epics. McCrea played a troubleshooter for the famous railroad entrepreneurs, their dream of connecting the country by rail hurtling to its denouement after the end of the Civil War. Major star Barbara Stanwyck played mail 
coach mistress Molly. With whom would she align herself, McCrea or likable but morally weak Dick Allen (Robert Preston)? Great character actors abounded, including future leading man and Oscar-winner Anthony Quinn, Lynne Overman, Akim Tamiroff, Stanley Ridges, and Brian Donlevy (Academy Award Supporting Actor nominee the same year for portraying the menacing Sergeant Markov in Beau Geste, also with Robert Preston).
In 1940’s Foreign Correspondent, director Alfred Hitchcock used his cinematic expertise to entertain while simultaneously warning the western democracies about the coming storm. World War II had begun in 1939 and a full-scale attack by Germany on France and England would take place only days after Foreign Correspondent opened. As one might expect from a Hitchcock film, there are numerous tense set-episodes, perhaps the most suspenseful the scene in which McCrea’s American journalist Huntley Haverstock/Johnny Jones’ trenchcoat is caught in a windmill’s gears, threatening to injure or kill him or at the very least alert the spies to his presence. Gary Cooper was the original choice to play Jones and apparently rued his decision not to take it. Lesley Coffin wrote, “But one quality McCrea did have that became signature to him was a sincerity and trust with his audiences.” The movie “benefits from having an anchor like McCrea who is completely trustworthy, as the audience is left to question the loyalties of so many surrounding him.” After surviving a plane crash into the sea, Johnny radios to the still free world an ominous warning: “It’s too late to do anything here now except stand in the dark and let them come as if the lights were all out everywhere except in America. Keep those lights burning. Cover them with steel. Ring them with guns. Build a canopy of battleships and bombing planes around them. Hello, America! Hang on to your lights, they’re the only lights left in the world!”
Sullivan’s Travels (1941) was the first of McCrea’s collaborations with comedic genius and director Preston Sturges. In this one, film director John L. Sullivan (McCrea) masquerades as a hobo to get the real dope on the downtrodden of the Depression years. He teams up with “The Girl” 
(Veronica Lake) and endures a number of misadventures before returning to his milieu with the goal of again making comedies to soothe people. Sullivan’s Travels was one of the first films to be placed on the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry.
The Palm Beach Story (1942) featured McCrea and Claudette Colbert as husband and wife in this Sturges screwball comedy with a surprise ending. It is reckoned another jewel in Sturges’ crown—and certainly in McCrea’s.
The More the Merrier (1943) was a delightful comedy from director George Stevens. McCrea was Sergeant Joe Carter, desperate to find housing in 
Washington, DC during World War II while waiting for orders to ship out. Endearingly curmudgeonly Benjamin Dingle (Charles Coburn, Supporting Actor Oscar-winner) sublets his so-called apartment to Carter without telling landlady Connie Milligan (Jean Arthur), who is aghast but has spent Dingle’s rent money and can’t oust him or Carter. This suits Dingle fine; he’s playing matchmaker for the twosome.
Ramrod (1947) was considered by Brian Garfield “a little classic” that had “hardly dated at all.” The title character Dave Nash (McCrea) tries to ameliorate the feud between Connie Dickason (Veronica Lake) and her father (Charlie Ruggles). Surprisingly, matters are not wrapped up smoothly.
Four Faces West (1948) presented a pseudo-Pat Garret/Billy the Kid scenario with Charles Bickford’s Garrett tracking bank robber Ross McEwen (McCrea). McEwen’s decision to risk his life helping a sick Mexican-American family convinces Garrett to vouch for him at the upcoming trial. Brian Garfield found “Stretches of lyrical beauty” in the film. “It’s a splendid example of what a low-budget Western can be: its excellence is such that it can make you feel as if you have never seen a Western before.”
Colorado Territory (1949) was the western version of High Sierra (1941), the film that helped turn Humphrey Bogart into a leading man. Here Wes McQueen (McCrea) plans a final robbery but it goes awry. Wounded and in hiding, he agrees to marry the female member of the gang, Colorado Carson (Virginia Mayo), but cornered in the ruins of ancient cliff dwellers, both meet their dismal fate. The most enjoyable scene is a gun-toting Mayo, blazing away at the posse.
Wichita (1955) allowed McCrea his take on the Wyatt Earp legend as he comes to Kansas and is appointed marshal. Instituting a no guns in town policy works temporarily but when the wife of one of the town’s fathers is killed, Wyatt buckles on his sidearm and tames the essentially uncivilized cattlemen. Director Jacques Tourneur might deserve the back-handed compliment also given another director, Robert Wise (The Curse of the Cat People, The Flame and the Arrow, Executive Suite, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, The Andromeda Strain), i.e., a chameleon who could not be labeled an auteur. But like Wise, Tourneur created classics in various genres, including I Walked with a Zombie with McCrea’s wife, Canyon Passage, Out of the Past, and Curse of the Demon.
In Fort Massacre (1958) McCrea played against type a psychologically-disturbed cavalry officer trying to keep his unhorsed troop together. This is a movie containing a variation on the outrageous sentiment, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian, baptized or not!” (Francis McDonald as Old 
Piute Man). Garfield wrote, “The McCrea character is unusually complicated and it is fascinating to watch the changes in him.”
Ride the High Country (1962) was McCrea’s last significant film and although relegated to the lower half of a double bill, was soon recognized as a classic, even winning the Grand Prix e I’UCC from the Belgian Film Critics Association. McCrea costarred with another actor from Hollywood’s golden age who chose to inhabit characters from the old west during his last working years: Randolph Scott. Ride the High Country was an early feature-length movie from director Sam Peckinpah. Joining forces with Gil Westrum (Scott), ex-marshal Steve Judd (McCrea) is hired to transport gold from a mining site only to have his mission compromised by a half-witted gang of thugs and Elsa (Mariette Hartley), trying to escape an abusive father. On-location filming near Mammoth Lakes, California, judicious gunplay, and a score by George Bassman enhanced the proceedings.
References
Coffin, Lesley L. Hitchcock’s Stars: Alfred Hitchcock and the Hollywood Studio System. 2014.
Garfield, Brian. Western Films: A Complete Guide. 1982.
Meyer, William R. The Making of the Great Westerns. 1979.
Shipman, David. The Great Stars: The Golden Years. 1970.
A sweet, lighthearted, and romantic musical featuring some incredible dancing from the main cast. Audrey Hepburn plays a bookshop clerk who unexpectedly becomes a model and muse to a famed photographer (Fred Astaire). Together they travel to Paris for a photo shoot, and find themselves falling for one another in the city of love…
“Fireflies,” this CD is full of other hidden gems, especially for fans of mellow, heartfelt electronic pop. The lyrics are quirky and emotional, and the backing music has a twinkly, dreamlike quality– great for these clear-skied spring nights. Standout tracks (besides “Fireflies,” of course) include “Vanilla Twilight,” “On the Wing,” and “The Saltwater Room.”
“The story of a clever little hero on a great big adventure. Join the Sherlock Holmes of Mousedom on a heroic journey unraveling clues through London.”
We all go through that weird phase when we’re absolutely addicted to learning about ancient Egypt, right? You know, the phase when you start to consider making a dramatic career change to become an Egyptologist hoping to uncover the next King Tut tomb? This Great Course taught by Bob Brier is a really good fix for that phase. It’s basically a 24-hour podcast hosted by a super engaging and accomplished scholar on ancient Egypt. Not only is it insightful learning about this advanced civilization, their art, and their scientific breakthroughs, but it’s just plain fun imagining what daily life was like for them nearly 5,000 years ago!
In this 1952 biopic based on the novel by Pierre La Mure, director John Huston, scenarist Anthony Veiller, and cinematographer Oswald Morris create the Paris of the late 19th century—its gaiety, its backstreet denizens, and the artist who captured it all: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901). As Lautrec, Academy Award winner for Cyrano de Bergerac Jose Ferrer received another Academy Award nomination. Future Dracula and horror film icon Christopher Lee appears briefly as artist Georges Seurat.
Ever wonder where the term gaslighting comes from? It comes from this movie! An absolute classic psychological thriller. Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer deliver excellent performances.
“Set in a world where summers span decades and winters can last a lifetime. From the scheming south and the savage eastern lands, to the frozen north and ancient Wall that protects the realm from the mysterious darkness beyond, the powerful families of the Seven Kingdoms are locked in a battle for the Iron Throne. This is a story of duplicity and treachery, nobility and honor, conquest, and triumph. In the Game of Thrones, you either win or you die.”
Here is their story, told for the first time in the words of the band. Adam “ADROCK” Horovitz and Michael “Mike D” Diamond offer revealing and very funny accounts of their transition from teenage punks to budding rappers; their early collaboration with Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin; the debut album that became the first hip hop record ever to hit #1, Licensed to Ill–and the album’s messy fallout as the band broke with Def Jam; their move to Los Angeles and rebirth with the genre-defying masterpiece Paul’s Boutique; their evolution as musicians and social activists over the course of the classic albums Check Your Head, Ill Communication, and Hello Nasty and the Tibetan Freedom Concert benefits conceived by the late Adam “MCA” Yauch; and more. For more than thirty years, this band has had an inescapable and indelible influence on popular culture. With a style as distinctive and eclectic as a Beastie Boys album, Beastie Boys Book upends the typical music memoir. Alongside the band narrative you will find rare photos, original illustrations, a cookbook by Chef Roy Choi, a graphic novel, a map of Beastie Boys’ New York, mixtape playlists, pieces by guest contributors, and many more surprises.”
work for mobster kingpins, Widmark cemented his place in cinema history by pushing the wheelchair-bound Mildred Dunnock down the steps to send a message to her snitch son to stay out of town. Gleefully he cackled:
amongst his crew.
Who was the greatest cinematic villain of the 1950s by number of roles? Is there a case for Raymond Burr? Think His Kind of Woman (1951) where Robert Mitchum, the seminal noir hero or anti-hero, plays a patsy to unknowingly impersonate Burr’s extradited mob boss Nick Ferraro in order for the criminal to return to the States. More famously, Burr was the albinish apartment resident James Stewart suspected of murdering his wife in Hitchcock’s 
A splendid, richly detailed young adult novel. Set in a Venice brought to vivid life by Funke’s masterful prose, the story follows a pair of orphans, Prosper and Bo, who flee their cruel relatives and join a ragtag group of child thieves, led by a charismatic boy who calls himself the Thief Lord. The Thief Lord is a colorful, mysterious figure with a wealth of secrets, and soon Bo and Prosper find themselves entangled in his exciting but dangerous lifestyle.
This movie is one of Sandra Bullock’s best Rom-Coms. She is a tomboy FBI agent who has to go undercover at a beauty pageant. Michael Caine is great as her stylist and coach. 
Directed by Clint Eastwood, Letters from Iwo Jima is not your typical World War Two movie. It captures the famous battle in the Pacific from the perspective of a Japanese soldier. This movie is a really good reminder that, at the most fundamental level, wars are fought by real people doing what they believe is the right thing. It’s easy to think about battles and wars being fought between massive armies, but look closer and you’ll see individuals like Saigo—individuals just trying to fulfill their orders, defend the emperor, and live.
Based on a tale by master storyteller Ernest Haycox (Bugles in the Afternoon), Canyon Passage is special in many ways. It was shot in gorgeous color on location in the Great Northwest, treated Native Americans with sympathy, and featured characters with depth. Added bonuses: Susan Hayward’s red tresses and Oscar-nominated “Ol’ Buttermilk Sky” sung by its composer, Hoagy Carmichael.
An absolutely endearing series. You will fall in love with the place and the characters. Heartwarming stories, one of BBC’s best. 
been taking French night classes downtown. So when a local paramilitary known as the Milkman begins pursuing her, she suddenly becomes ‘interesting,’ the last thing she ever wanted to be. Despite middle sister’s attempts to avoid him—and to keep her mother from finding out about her maybe-boyfriend—rumors spread and the threat of violence lingers. Milkman is a story of the way inaction can have enormous repercussions, in a time when the wrong flag, wrong religion, or even a sunset can be subversive. Told with ferocious energy and sly, wicked humor, Milkman establishes Anna Burns as one of the most consequential voices of
our day.”
Moxie, is Amy Poehler’s second Netflix movie. In it, a shy high school student, inspired by her mother’s own rebellious past, gathers the girls in her local high school to publish a zine that shines a spotlight on the sexism they endure every day. It premieres March 3rd. Later, on the 12th, Jennifer Garner stars in Yes Day, a family comedy about two parents who decide to let their kids make the rules for one day. And music lovers will want to catch the new documentary Biggie: I Got a Story To Tell, which celebrates the life and work of rapper Notorious B.I.G. The film features rare footage of the star and interviews with his closest family and friends as it traces his rise to rap royalty.
soul mate using DNA. Then on the 15th comes Zero Chill, a new teen comedy for the skating and sports fans. In it, a talented young figure skater must leave everything behind to follow her brother to a high-end hockey academy. Finally, March 26th will see the series premiere of The Irregulars, a Sherlock Holmes spinoff story with a fun and youthful twist. Mystery lovers won’t want to stop watching.
