By the time director Alfred Hitchcock was preparing to film his mystery suspense thriller Rear Window in 1954, starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly, he had earned a reputation in Hollywood for being a master filmmaker with an eye for details. It should be no wonder, then, that Hitchcock pulled out all the stops to…
Category: Golden Hollywood
Fatty Arbuckle: Rapist or Victim of Yellow Journalism?
The current “fake news” era of journalism has nothing on the Yellow Journalism era of the 1920s when publishers vied with each other to sell more newspapers even if that meant printing sensational stories and outright lies. This was the setting in which a young, aspiring actress tragically died and one of America’s most popular…
“The Day the Earth Stood Still”: Sci-Fi with Social Commentary
Science fiction films are one of the most popular movie genres today, but in the 1950s, before the space race and moon landing, Hollywood simply didn’t make a lot of sci-fi movies. A notable exception to that is 20th Century Fox’s The Day the Earth Stood Still, which debuted in 1951. Based on a 1940…