Showbiz History: God bless Lily St. Cyr 🎵... and Joan Crawford

Here's what happened on this day, June 3rd, in showbiz related history...

1910 Paulette Goddard born in Long Island. She becomes a star in the 1930s and 1940s making multiple films with Charlie Chaplin and Bob Hope among many others and is Oscar nominated for So Proudly We Hail (1943). Famously screen tests and is publicly considered as Scarlett O'Hara but loses the role to then unknown Vivien Leigh.

1918 BURLESQUE CENTENNIAL ~ Stripping star Lili St Cyr was born on this day. Her short lived film career kicked off with B movie Son of Sinbad (1955) but mostly she was famous for burlesque performances. She's name-checked in the famous 'Floor Show' number in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1976) with Susan Sarandon warbling "god bless Lili St Cyr 🎵"...

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Blueprints: "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?"

This week on Blueprints, Jorge writes a letter to daddy.

Any screenwriting book, seminar, or four-year degree will tell you that screenwriting is all about showing, not telling. It should feel more like describing a house in a Craiglist ad than writing a novel. The script is being written so it can be shot, not read. However, just like any other “rule” in cinema, it’s made to be broken. In fact, those who break rules can sometimes transcend them.

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, the 1962 grand guignol classic, is best remembered for the bombastic performances of the two leads, and the drama that took place between them behind the scenes. But reading the script, it’s apparent that the story is charged with remarkable meaning, intention, and impulse. Often hidden in the lines that the audience is never going to read...

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Link is an Open Door

let's catch up on news stories...

• Tracking Board ABC developing a live-action sitcom remake of The Jetsons
• Vulture a tribute to the bungled non-release of Tulip Fever
• Criterion a Joan Crawford double feature Daisy Kenyon and Sudden Fear on filmstruck
• Cinema Enthusiast polled cinephiles on the best films of 1969. Lots of opinions though it's beyond troubling that They Shoot Horses, Don't They? which runs laps around almost everything produced in 1969, just barely squeezes into the top ten 

more after the jump including but not limited to Wonder Woman 2, Obi Wan Kenobi, mother!, Frozen, and The Conjuring.

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Beauty vs Beast: Murder on the Orientation Express

Jason from MNPP here with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" entertainment - I don't know if you've noticed by now that I will take any opportunity to talk about Alfred Hitchcock, but I will take any opportunity to talk about Alfred Hitchcock, and his birthday (which was yesterday) offers one of the best. Thankfully we've still plenty of choices - not many directors adored their villains like Hitch did, and so this series is a perfect fit.

And here's a good one! 1951's Strangers on a Train offers up one of Hitch's greatest bad guys in Bruno Antony, murder theorist and gay icon, played with giddy panache by Robert Walker. And Farley Granger's no slouch as the clearly-enticed-no-matter-how-hard-he-pretends-otherwise tennis-pro Guy Haines.

PREVIOUSLY It's one of her greatest roles so I'm not surprised that Joan Crawford stampeded her way to a win with last week's Johnny Guitar contest - she outgunned Mercedes McCambridge with 73% of your vote. Said Claran:

"This overlookes gem is one o JC's best. Much as I enjoy McCambridge all out evilness n Hayden's macho smotherness, it is Joan's icy confidence n eletricfying performance that keeps this western together n makes it a delicious camp. Afterall, it IS a Miss Crawford's pic n dun cha forget it!!"

Beauty vs Beast: Cowgirl's Hall of Fame

Jason from MNPP here with this week's "Beauty vs Beast." On this day in 1911 was born the writer-director Nicholas Ray, whose movies have come to seem fairly ahead of their time. His biggest success would of course be 1955's Rebel Without a Cause (his only Oscar nomination was for that film's script) but several of his other works have grown in reputation over the decades, and we're here to look at maybe the weirdest of them all - 1954's technicolor acid-western Johnny Guitar. (See Also: TFE's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" entry for this movie.)

Guitar stars Joan Crawford as the "railroad tramp" Vienna, who runs a saloon and is drawn to bad men, and her cowgirl nemesis Emma Small, played by an enthusiastically hateful Mercedes McCambridge. The actresses apparently tore it up behind the scenes (everybody who's spoken of the filming of this film makes it sound like a nightmare experience) and their rivalry on-screen brings the heat (in more ways than one) as well.

PREVIOUSLY We entertained ourselves last week by wondering why there's no Blade reboot being worked on, and looked back at the original - y'all were just slightly more captivated by Stephen Dorff's villain to the tune of 53% of your vote. Said Harmodio:

"It's hard to imagine anyone other than Wesley Snipes in the Blade character. He totally endorsed the character. Even so the film belongs to Stephen Dorff and his charismatic, strong, confident, evil performance. He dominates the film and his presence is missed in the next movies."