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March is Women’s History Month which commemorates and encourages the “study, observance and celebration of the vital role of women in American history.” And who better to study, observe and celebrate than Mae West and her place in movie history.

Talk about pushing the envelope. West wrote plays-usually revolving around sex-which landed her in jail. She never met an innuendo she didn’t like. West film comedies were popular and controversial. She was banned from NBC Radio-her name couldn’t even be mentioned-for over a decade. West even guest starred on a 1964 episode of CBS’ “Mr. Ed.” West has inspired several female performers over the decades including Madonna and remained true to herself up until her death in 1980 at the age of 87.

West didn’t look at any other actress of the day. Sources say she was 5’ to 5’ 2” (rumor is that she wore eight-inch platform heels on stage...

There weren’t many other figures of old Hollywood like Mae West, a bold comic performer who was at least 50 years head of her time in terms of her material and command of her career.

She was born August 17, probably in 1893, though accounts differ. Variety covered her vaudeville appearances starting in 1911, describing her as a “cyclonic young singer” in shows like “Big Gaiety Review.” In 1912, Variety tried to discreetly describe her specialty act in Philadelphia, which was called “A Muscle Dance in a Sitting Position.” The PR stated: “It is all in the way she does it, and her way is all her own.”

That doesn’t provide a lot of clues, but the phrase “her way is all her own” sums up her style and her work. West took charge of her life and career. She challenged taboos by dealing with sex in a comic tone, when America’s...

“Well, the end of another busy day. I can’t wait till I get back to bed. If that don’t work I’ll try to sleep!”

Myra Breckinridge screens Wednesday night December 2nd at Schlafly Bottleworks at 8pm

You never know what’s brewing at Webster University’s Strange Brew Film series, and there’s nothing stranger than this month’s entry, Myra Breckinridge. Gore Vidal’s 1968 satirical novel Myra Breckinridge was considered un-filmable to begin with. That’s probably true. There’s no way that this story about a sex change operation could have ever become a classic mainstream movie. But the 1970 film version is not all that bad, In fact, thanks mostly to some really clever casting (bringing Mae West into the film was a stroke of genius and a young Farrah Fawcett is quite a sight) and a wonderful, bitingly funny and dead-on performance by a young Raquel Welch,...

By Tim Greaves

As British noir crime dramas of the Fifties go, The House Across the Lake (1954) is probably as good an example as you could hope to dip into. The tale unfolds in flashback, related by our main protagonist to another character (precisely who is not revealed until the final reel), is embroidered with expositional narration and, though clichéd and not in the least unpredictable, delivers atmosphere by the barrel.

The film is an early entry on the CV of writer-director Ken Hughes (the arguable highpoints of whose career, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Cromwell, remain perennial favourites, whilst his latter-day offerings, Night School and Sextette, are best brushed under the proverbial carpet). Hughes scripted The House Across the Lake from his own source novel, “High Wray”, and also commandeered the director’s chair. Nowadays understandably marketed as a Hammer film, it’s actually the fruit of the company’s earlier incarnation Exclusive Films.

A Conversation with Edith Head will be held at The Sheldon Ballroom in St. Louis on December 6th and 7th

All About Eve, Roman Holiday, The Ten Commandments, A Place In The Sun, The Sting. These great films and hundreds more have one thing in common: costume designer Edith Head (1897–1981). The small woman with the familiar straight bangs, black-rimmed saucer glasses, and unsmiling countenance racked up an unprecedented 35 Oscar nods and 400 film credits over the course of a sixty-year career. The golden age of Hollywood sparkled with extravagant cinematic productions and stars such as Bette Davis, Elizabeth Taylor, Natalie Wood, Mae West, Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Barbara Stanwyck, and Robert Redford were made even more glamorous by donning the costumes designed by incredibly talented Ms Head.

Theater director Susan Claassen, a New Jersey native got the idea for a project based on Edith Head several years ago after...

All About Eve, Roman Holiday, The Ten Commandments, A Place In The Sun, The Sting. These great films and hundreds more have one thing in common: costume designer Edith Head (1897–1981). The small woman with the familiar straight bangs, black-rimmed saucer glasses, and unsmiling countenance racked up an unprecedented 35 Oscar nods and 400 film credits over the course of a sixty-year career. The golden age of Hollywood sparkled with extravagant cinematic productions and stars such as Bette Davis, Elizabeth Taylor, Natalie Wood, Mae West, Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Barbara Stanwyck, and Robert Redford were made even more glamorous by donning the costumes designed by the incredibly talented Mrs. Head.

Theater director Susan Claassen, a New Jersey native, got the idea for a project based on Edith Head several years ago after she watched a televised biography of the designer. She realized that her physical resemblance to the designer was uncanny,...

Faye Dunaway in ‘Mommie Dearest’ — Joan Crawford portrayal ‘Greatest Bad Performance’? Clint Eastwood Best Picture Oscar nominee among ‘Greatest Bad Movies’ See previous post: “From John Travolta to Bob Dylan: ‘The Greatest Bad Movies of All Time’: Q&A with Phil Hall.” (Photo: Mommie Dearest, Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford.) I noticed you have included some Bad Movies that were well received upon their release, e.g., Clint Eastwood’s Best Picture Oscar nominee ‘Mystic River’ (2003) and Henry King’s ‘In Old Chicago’ (1937) — another Best Picture nominee. Why are those movies not only Bad Movies, but also Great Bad Movies? I need to begin my answer by insisting that my new book is strictly about opinion. I don’t pretend to be the author of a be-all/end-all encyclopedia on the subject. Many people may disagree with the selection of films, both from an inclusive viewpoint and from...

With the words, "I never play over twenty-eight," Mae West supposedly ruled herself out of consideration for the role of Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder's Sunset Blvd. It's hard to work out why she was considered, since she had no associating with silent cinema, but perhaps at that stage the character was pre-Code rather than pre-sound. At any rate, Gloria Swanson took the role and enjoyed a renaissance, in the process obscuring the fact that she had enjoyed some brief success in early talkies (including one co-written by Wilder).

Maybe West just seemed like someone who wouldn't be shy about playing love scenes with a younger man. Much, much younger. She got her chance to prove this in Myra Breckinridge (1970), at the age of at least seventy-six. It's a moronic adaptation of Gore Vidal, directed by a British actor whose big idea was to make the whole thing a dream sequence.

By Lee Pfeiffer

Remember that scene in Mel Brooks' The Producers when the first performance of Springtime for Hitler has just been performed for an opening night crowd on Broadway? The camera pans around the silent audience to show people sitting slack-jawed, mouths agape at the travesty they have just witnessed. I had a similar experience watching Sextette for the first time. Mind you, as a long time retro movie analyst, I was well-aware of the film's reputation as a notorious misfire. However, no criticism can quite prepare anyone for the experience of actually watching this bizarre spectacle unfold before your eyes. Scorpion Video has made that possible with a special edition DVD release of the 1978 musical comedy that was to be Mae West's second attempt to make a big screen comeback. (The first, the notorious 1970 bomb Myra Breckenridge, outraged her when she saw the final cut.) Sextette...

Help! us explore the many ways in which John, Paul, George and Ringo have influenced film, then and now

With Magical Mystery Tour getting the bells-and-whistles reissue treatment this week, here's a look back at the multifaceted and often downright bizarre impact the Beatles have made on the moving image.

1) The Beatles as Oscar-winners

Let It Be was filmed in January 1969, but remained unreleased until May 1970, by which point the band had officially announced its split. The Beatles were keen to see the film buried; they had little desire to return to this testing period in their career or to air some of the more fractious moments it contains – most famously the tiff between Paul and George ("I'll play, you know, whatever you want me to play or I won't play at all"). And yet, ultimately, they're probably happy they did. In April 1971 the Beatles picked up their one and only Academy award,...

It doesn’t come as a huge surprise to discover horror movie-lovers Alice Cooper and Tim Burton had plenty to talk about when the rocker turned up to film a cameo in the director’s new, Johnny Depp-starring movie Dark Shadows. “We had dinner one night in London and we both knew every point of reference,” Cooper recalls. “If he would say, ‘Suspiria’ I would say ‘Dario Argento.’ I see the humor in horror as much as Tim or Johnny does, so we really do fit together.”

The “School’s Out” star plays himself in Burton’s big budget adaptation of the bizarre,...

After being on the receiving of some mighty bad buzz last month all has been quiet on the production front of Tim Burton's big-screen adaptation of the classic Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows. But a recent development has temporarily shone the spotlight on the movie in the form of the recently-announced casting of Alice Cooper, the star of such films as Sextette, Monster Dog, Prince of Darkness, and Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (his performance as Freddy Krueger's stepfather had Oscar gold written all over it-damn you Jack Palance). Apparently when Cooper isn't acting he's indulging his secret passion for making music, something he has been doing for more than four decades. Who knew? [...]...

A look at what's new on DVD this week:

"Fubar: Balls to the Wall"

Directed by Michael Dowse

Released by Screen Media Films

Following up the 2002 cult comedy about lifelong metalhead pals Terry and Dean, this sequel, which recently premiered to much acclaim at SXSW, finds the duo down on their luck when they decide to head up north to work in the oil industry, but when their best laid plans go awry, Dean attempts to get on worker's comp, leading to the kind of exploits best enjoyed with a cold beer.

"Born to Raise Hell" (2011)

Directed by Darren Shahlavi

Released by Paramount

Steven Seagal not only stars as an Interpol agent named Samuel Axel in this Dtv thriller, but also wrote the script, so you know it has to be good. In it, Axel must bring down a gun trafficking ring in the Balkans where the stakes become personal...

At the height of his career in show business he was one of Hollywood's most recognized faces. He also became a sex symbol to millions of women. Actor Tony Curtis, who appeared in over 120 movies during the course of his seven decades on the screen, died yesterday from a heart attack at the age of 85.

Curtis' most well-known role was as a 1920s jazz musician on the lam from gangsters in Billy Wilder's 1959 comedy Some Like It Hot. Paired opposite Jack Lemmon, the two dressed up as women and joined an all-female band to hide from the bad guys. Curtis' character had a romantic attraction to Marilyn Monroe in the film. Off-screen, the actor also enjoyed an affair with the blonde starlet. In fact, Curtis began to cultivate a reputation as a ladies man and lothario, a fact that destroyed several of his six marriages throughout the course of...

Walter Pidgeon, Greer Garson in William Wyler‘s Mrs. Miniver I mentioned dignified, gentlemanly, and usually a little dull Walter Pidgeon the other day, wishing he had been cast as Jane Powell‘s grandfather in A Date with Judy (1948) so he could (more or less) have dated Carmen Miranda on-screen. Had that happened, you could forget Greer Garson — and Tracy-Hepburn, Ladd-Lake, Loy-Powell, Flynn-de Havilland, Garbo-Gilbert, and Abbott-Costello. Pidgeon-Miranda would have been the movie couple for all time. No such luck, unfortunately. But Walter Pidgeon fans, nonfans, and those who don’t know Pidgeon from Adam can check him out on Thursday on Turner Classic Movies. Thirteen Pidgeon films will be presented as part of TCM’s “Summer Under the Stars” series, though nothing "new," like, say, A Most Immoral Lady (in case it still exists), Big Brown Eyes, or Sextette. [Walter Pidgeon schedule.] But there’ll always be Greer Garson, with whom Pidgeon...

To add to the slew of casting announcements for Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Tourist, it’s just been announced that Timothy Dalton (License To Kill) and Steven Berkoff (Rambo) have joined Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie and the rest of the cast. Coming Soon tipped us off.

Who are these people and what is this movie? Read on, adventurers.

The film follows an American tourist (Depp) who goes to Italy to mend a broken heart, meets a beautiful and mysterious woman (Jolie, obviously) and gets caught up in espionage. Depp and Jolie need no parenthetical work references, however Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck might.

Donnersmarck wrote and directed the excellent Das Leben der Anderen (aka The Lives of Others), which will be remade in the U.S. and produced by Harvey Weinstein, Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella. With the type of cast attached to The Tourist, one gets the sense...

One of my favorite things in the world is a musical gone wrong. I don't know, there's just something particularly funny about watching a musical number go down in flames -- and the more awkward the better. Well, at least I know I'm not the only one who feels this way, because Over at Den of Geek they have compiled a list of the Top 10 Worst Musical Moments in Movies. Now, they didn't just limit themselves to straight musicals, but the results are a trip down memory lane for me and a nightmare for most people. Taking the number one spot was a pretty obscure moment starring Hollywood Legend Mae West and Timothy Dalton (the much-maligned Bond) in the 1978 musical, Sextette. There are plenty of cringe-worthy moments in this film, but the highlight is Geek's selection: Dalton and West singing (and I use the term loosely) Love Will Keep Us Together.