Curio: Rubber Stamp World

Alexa here with your weekly arts and crafts. I have to admit that I have an oddball addiction to rubber stamps. Not your run-of-the-mill, country-crafty variety, but those of the pop-culture-obsessy variety. I spend a bit too much of my monthly budget on them, stamping gift cards, tags, or any piece of paper that isn't tied down in the house.  Etsy and ebay have enabled this addiction: etsy has some wonderful hand-carved stamps for fans of everything from Sherlock to Star Wars.  And ebay has some great used ones: I recently purchased these What Ever Happened to Baby Jane and All About Eve stamps from the estate of Charles Pierce (who famously dressed as Baby Jane for a series of greeting cards).

Alas, my budget this month can't handle me buying all the ones on my wish list, so I'll share my favorite film fan stamps currently for sale, after the jump...

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A Year with Kate: The Corn is Green (1978)

 Episode 44 of 52: In which Katharine Hepburn bids farewell to her lifelong friend and director, George Cukor.

Who’s up for another catfight? Way back near the beginning of this series, I manufactured a rivalry between young Kate Hepburn and Miss Bette Davis, both sporting ear-splitting accents in two movies from 1934. This time, I don’t have to fake a competition. Katharine Hepburn’s 1979 TV movie happens to be a remake of a 1945 Bette Davis film.

The Corn Is Green (based on the play by by Emlyn Williams) is the story of Miss Moffat, who gets off her tuffet to teach the Welsh miners to read. The role of a strong-willed woman who changes the lives of her impoverished pupils would be catnip for either of our great actresses, so it’s no surprise that Bette and Kate both played Miss Moffat 34 years apart. What is surprising is how different Bette and Kate’s performances are, because the two films they star in are polar opposites in mood and moral. Just how often do you get to compare your favorite actresses on a scene-by-scene basis like this?

The Eyes vs The Cheekbones after the jump.

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Bette Davis, Always the Animated Star

Each time Bette Davis's name comes up here or there (surprisingly often) I feel waves of guilt that I never completed that Seasons of Bette series. And here I was planning my own series, as its follow up, inspired by "A Year With Kate" in which I would do 52 episodes on someone. (FTR Anne Marie and I are both brainstorming how to follow up that amazing beast of a project).

But I couldn't let this new episode of Blank on Blank pass by without our attention. If you haven't seen the series it's a terrific time waster from PBS in which celebrity voices play on the audio and an animator interprets them for a unique short film. Bette talks about her intelligence and the gender politics of 1963 in this fun short... 

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1989 Look Back: The Last Films of Two Hollywood Legends

Hollywood in 1989 was a far different place than it was in the studio system heyday of the 30s through the 50s. The Old Hollywood glamour that made stars like Bette Davis and Audrey Hepburn once shine bright seemed like a distant memory compared to such blatantly sexual films as Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Trying to imagine Davis' Margo Channing or Hepburn's Holly Golightly appearing alongside the neon prints and leg warmers of the 80's is ludicrous. Except that both of these legendary Best Actresses happened to still be making films in 1989, decades after they had first achieved stardom. Sadly, 1989 would be the last year that both actresses would appear again on the big screen and what's worse, neither of their films (Wicked Stepmother and Always) would contribute much to their cinematic legacy.

more after the jump

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Podcast: Katharine with a side of Bette!

In this special edition of the podcast, Nathaniel welcomes two Katharine Hepburn buffs Nick Davis and Anne Marie Kelly to talk about their (shared) first Actress Obsession. Naturally Kate the Great isn't the only diva that finds her way into the conversation. Expect supporting roles or cameos: Bette Davis, Cary Grant, Barbara Stanwyck, Tennessee Williams, Deborah Kerr, Spencer Tracy, Audrey Hepburn, George Cukor and more...

You can listen at the bottom of the post or download the conversation on iTunes. Continue the conversation in the comments.

00:00 Intro. Plus Middle School drama: Hilariously "intense" early obsessions
13:00 Types, Genres, and Suddenly Last Summer
17:00 Her autobiography and films she loathed like Dragon Seed
22:00 Chemistry and co-stars
33:00 Revisiting unsatisfying movies -- raise a cocktail to this peculiar cinephile habit
40:00 The Spinster & The Magic Penis
47:00 Bette Davis and why we compare them. Silliness before the sign off.

Further Reading
Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Summertime 
Nick's Hepburn Oscar Profile
A Year With Kate: Pat & Mike
A Year With Kate: Dragon Seed 
A Year With Kate: Christopher Strong
Me: Stories of My Life (Book)
The Making of the African Queen (Book)
Alex Von Tunzelmann & Self Styled Siren (Twitter) 

Kate with a side of Bette