You know, it just occurred to me that the reason I'm not as crazy as the rest of you are about Jimmy Stewart is because his character was so cluelessly mean to Ruth Hussey's Elizabeth Imbrie  in The Philadelphia Story.  Yes, this is unfair, but she's just that good, I guess. Or he's really like that.

Today is Ruth Hussey's 100th Birthday, born in Providence, Rhode Island, October 30, 1911. I can count the number of pictures I've seen her in on one hand and a couple of toes, but she makes a big impression in all of them. Make it easy on yourself and watch the easiest to get: The Women (1939) or The Philadelphia Story (1940), which also grants you a double dose of Virginia Weidler.
 
Meanwhile, here she is in a strange episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents called "Mink" (1956).

The only mystical experience I ever had was in India in 1996 and it involved Barbara Stanwyck.

I had just purchased a paperback biography of her from one of the many street book vendors in Bombay and was reading it in my hotel room — with the TV on, of course — when I got to the section about her career in Westerns. I laughed out loud when I read the name of the theme song from Forty Guns, "High Ridin' Woman with a Whip," when what did I hear clip-clopping euphoniously from the television...? Yes! The very same "High Ridin' Woman with a Whip" and the film Forty Guns. A cold chill ran from my left big toe up through my right eyeball.  From that day forward, I felt a special connection to Barbara Stanwyck. Too bad neither the film nor the book was very good.

Born on this day in Brooklyn in 1907, Ruby Catherine Stevens would eventually become everyone's favorite actress to work with — from the crew on up. A swell collection of photos and a fine homage can be found on the fansite, Barbara Stanwyck — The Queen, a nice break from Wikipedia.

Some of my favorite films of hers:

** Baby Face (1933). Girl from the wretched side of the tracks sleeps her way to the top of a very tall building.

** Stella Dallas (1937). If you don't cry at this movie, you're dead inside.

** Remember the Night (1940) and Ball of Fire (1941). They're pretty much the same movie, but both are very good.

** Clash by Night (1952). Source of my favorite line: "You want my life story, Joe, I'll give to you in four words: Big ideas. Small results."

And I guess Double Indemnity (1944), but only the way Steve Hayes tells it:

Ginger Rogers was a really good actress and I'm sorry that these kids today probably will only ever know her through that apt but aged saw "...did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels." Blah blah blah. If anyone ever has a chance to see anything of hers by accident, that is, which is terribly, shamefully unlikely.

For my money, you can't beat her in:

** 42nd Street (1933). I love this picture. It's silly and she's hilarious.

** Stage Door (1937). Such a good movie, it should have been made in 1939.

** Vivacious Lady (1938). And may I just say, oh my god, the chemistry between her and Jimmy Stewart is fantastic. You have to know how I feel about Jimmy Stewart to appreciate what that means.

Sorry, I didn't care for Kitty Foyle, but it was nice she got an Oscar. Read the book; it's much better.

Happy Birthday, Virginia Katherine McMath. You'll always be four years younger than Barbara Stanwyck and she never got an Oscar for acting — which is a SCANDAL, but not your fault.

Here she is on "What's My Line?" for the second of six appearances.

Doris Day was born Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff 89 years ago today. Hard to believe, isn't it? I don't know what more I could add to the great body of information there is out there about her (including her excellent memoir, Doris Day: Her Own Story), except to express my admiration for her talent and perseverance in the face of stupid marital and professional choices.

I think she's a lovely human being with a beautiful voice who has had to navigate complicated roles and a messy personal life for at least six decades. I could listen to late 1940s Doris for hours. She just melts my heart.

I first became aware of Jan Sterling in one of my favorite films, Caged (1950) starring Eleanor Parker and Agnes Moorehead. She played a dizzy inmate called Smoochie who wore cute little pigtails. I thought she was marvelous and it's been a mystery to me why she didn't get better parts after that.

She had an unworthy role in the Thelma Ritter vehicle, The Mating Season, only a year later and watching her I thought how tough it must have been to be so blonde. Apparently, she got an Oscar nomination for her role in The High and Mighty, a film I guess I should see again, because it keeps coming up over and over again.

Here she is in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents story, "On the Nose," as a compulsive gambler. And the dope who plays her husband winds up on Little House on the Prairie as the guy who runs the sawmill some 15 years later, so it all works out in the end.

I'm finding it surprisingly difficult to write about Virginia Weidler. As the smartest, most regular-looking, cleverest girl in the room, she meant the world to my sister and me. We loved her like a great friend for many years. She was the closest thing to a real person in the classic films we adored and one couldn't help but watch her and hope she'd say or do more.

If you haven't seen her in anything, you must see The Philadelphia Story. Then maybe Young Tom Edison. She's good if less herself in The Women, but that's not her fault.

By the time she was 17, Virginia had made 45 films and had been in the business for 12 years. She retired shortly after Best Foot Forward, a wise move, got married and had two children. She died in 1968 at the age of 41.

Here she is as a rabid autograph hound in her penultimate picture, The Youngest Profession (1943). Her line, "What's more important, Walter Pidgeon or liver and onions?" has become something of a motto for me.

Virginia Weidler would have been 84 today. Happy Birthday, Buddy.

An interesting quote lifted directly and wholly from IMDb:
[When asked about her career in later years,] Virginia would always change the subject as quickly as possible without being rude. She never watched her old movies or replied to requests for interviews. Although she was never one to criticize, I think our boys got the impression that their mother didn't think very much of the motion picture industry." -- Lionel Krisel, Weidler's husband

I first became aware of Edward Everett Horton through "Fractured Fairytales," then F-Troop,  then Fred & Ginger movies (which are glorious, but basically cartoons). It wasn't until I caught Holiday on some late show that I realized what a wonderful actor he was.

According to IMDb, the man had some project going every year from 1922 until 1971, the year after his death at the age of 84. If you've heard him or seen him, you've loved him.

Happy Birthday, Edward Everett Horton. Every time I think of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, I hear him call her by her real name, Tusinelda Wolfenpickle, but can't for the life of me confirm that with YouTube.

Just finished watching Hard, Fast and Beautiful (RKO 1951), and yes, it's natural to think that it's the story of my life, but no, turns out to be just one of the many examples of  Claire Trevor's naturalness at playing complicated women. I absolutely love and adore her. In this particular movie she plays the ambitious mother of a budding tennis star played by Sally Forrest, who looks oddly like Ida Lupino, the film's director, in a 2nd-cousin-y sort of way. 

[Speaking of Ida Lupino, she and Robert Ryan just appear out of nowhere as spectators during one of the tennis matches played by Sally Forrest's character. It was a little unnerving. I mean, you expect Robert Ryan to sock somebody, right?] It's not a really good movie, but worth it for the sports angle and the sweetness of the boyfriend and father figures.

There's nothing Claire Trevor couldn't do, in my humble opinion. She could be cutting, sympathetic, damaged, scheming, bad, mean, sexy, and tired — but always real, human, and female. Ugh. Nobody writes for actresses like her and it's criminal. Granted, I still haven't seen her in the episode of Murder, She Wrote that Netflix tells me I can see for free, but I'm guessing she's marvelous. I'll certainly let you know.

She does show up in an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (the Murder, She Wrote of the late 1950s), as an American journalist who finds herself caught up in Cold War intrigue with a hot young Jacques Bergerac, and old enemy stand-bys, Werner Klemperer (Col. Klink) and John Banner (Sgt. Schultz). Don't take my word for it; just watch for yourself.

Meanwhile, Happy 101st Birthday, Claire Trevor. There was and is no one like you.

Yes, yes I know that tomorrow is Elizabeth Taylor's birthday (and Joanne Woodward's), but I'd like to send special birthday wishes to the cosmos on behalf of Tony Randall, who would have been 90 today.

I have kind of a love/hate thing with the film, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter — OK, mostly love, but only because of Tony Randall.  And there was no one better than he at being jilted by Doris Day.

By way of tribute, I present his appearance on "What's My Line?" during which Dorothy Kilgallen called him a curvaceous cutie. She was blindfolded.

Happy Birthday, Tony Randall.

Today is the 109th birthday of Thelma Ritter, the best wisecracking maid/nurse/housekeeper/neighbor lady in motion picture history.

Her uncredited part as Sadie Dugan in A Letter to Three Wives (1949) was only her second appearance in a motion picture; the first was as a shop-weary mom dragging her son around Macy's in Miracle on 34th Street (1947), which I'm sure you'll remember if you think about it.

Her third film, All About Eve (1950) earned her the first of four consecutive Academy Award nominations for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Not bad for a gal who didn't even get into pictures until she was my age. In total, she was nominated six times:
     *  All About Eve (1950)
     *  The Mating Season (1951)
     *  With a Song in My Heart (1952)
     *  Pickup on South Street (1953)
     *  Pillow Talk (1959)
     *  Birdman of Alcatraz (1962)

...and never won. NEH-VAH. [Which reminds me,nominate your favorite scandalously neglected star for this year's Aggie Awards.]

Thelma Ritter did a lot of television work in the 50s and early 60s, including a turn as a busybody with a dangerous secret in "The Babysitter," on the first season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

There is a lovely filmography and tribute to Thelma Ritter here on The Film Experience Blog, but for possibly the best impersonation I've ever heard and a great review of With a Song in My Heart, please watch Episode 9 of Tired Old Queen at the Movies.

And if you haven't had enough, I stumbled across her briefish appearance as the New York co-host of the 1954 Academy Awards — a fabulous year for Oscar — On the Waterfront, Rear Window (with, oh, Thelma Ritter in another great supporting role), and Country Girl, with Bing Crosby as an alcoholic...not the biggest stretch for him artistically, from what I understand.

Some YouTube angel posted the entire event. I present the section with Bob Hope's opening monologue (sorry, no host can touch him) and Thelma Ritter, glammed up, slightly nervous, and terribly sweet.

Born on February 10, 1930, Robert Wagner is one of the few stars left who can claim a firm link to Hollywood's Golden Age. I first became aware of him in the mid 1970s as the ex-con-turned-P.I. in the series "Switch," with Eddie Albert and the lovely Sharon Gless, on whom I developed such an enduring attraction that I refuse to watch the show today in any available digital form, lest it ruin my memory forever.

In my late teens I saw Wagner in Titanic as the young college boy who develops a shipboard crush on Audrey Dalton, the daughter of Clifton Webb and my eternal mystery date, Barbara Stanwyck. He is dashing and sweet and believable and brave, and the film is better in many ways than its James Cameron mega-spectacularaganza remake whose only redeeming feature is Kate Winslet's fantastic (and rightly, effectively, and oft-highlighted) decolletage. Not only is the 1953 Titanic superior in storytelling and casting, it spawned a romance between Robert Wagner and Barbara Stanwyck that lasted several years until his marriage to Natalie Wood. And he had the class to wait 50 years to tell the tale.

The man has depth and humor and has carved out a long, profitable, and respectable career for himself and I salute him.

Observe his fine performance on "What's My Line" taped just a couple weeks after his 27th birthday on February 24, 1957. He does an admirable Clarke Gable, Jimmy Stewart, and James Cagney.

Happy Birthday, RJ.

My agent had told me that he was going to make me the Janet Gaynor of England - I was going to play all the sweet roles. Whereupon, at the tender age of thirteen, I set upon the path of playing nothing but hookers.

Today is Ida Lupino's birthday. She would have been either 97 or 93, depending on which birthdate you prefer (2/4/1914 or 2/4/1918). Both dates are out there, but Wikipedia and IMDb say 1918, and I'm sticking with them. But we can be pretty sure that today is the day.

A beautiful, intelligent, versatile talent, she was a rare presence in front of and behind the camera. I encourage all Lupino fans to visit the official Ida Lupino website to see movie trailers, review her accomplishments as an actress, writer, and director. You can also watch full episodes of her many television appearances — which is exactly why god made the Internet.

Ida Lupino is also featured as the Turner Classic Movies Star of the Month, but it's a little hard to tell whether it's this month they're talking about. No matter. TCM provides some good synopses of her films and of course, dishy photos.

Happy 90-ish birthday, Ida Lupino!