Erle Stanley Gardner’s lawyer-slash-detective character Perry Mason was created in 1933, and within a year Warner Bros. created a film series based on the books. The first film, “The Case of the Howling Dog” (1934), was based on a serialized novel published in Liberty Magazine earlier that same year. In …
I didn’t know whether to go with “Part Deux” or “Electric Boogaloo” for my sequel subject title. “Part Deux” won out, it’s the lesser-known reference. It’s true that I just had a lengthy hiatus, but this is still SBBN’s 2nd blogiversary and I’m here to celebrate it in style. I …
Oh, Terence Morgan, you look so good in tights. You know that’s the reason you got fan mail from teenage girls after playing Laertes in “Hamlet”. Terence Morgan is one of those actors that most people in the U.S. don’t know, or only barely remember as Sir Francis Drake in …
No one ever knows how to write something like this. Wait, let me take that back: Some people can write what they feel, sincerely and beautifully, even if it’s a difficult thing to do. Larry Gelbart was one of those people. Sadly, we lost Larry today, age 81, from cancer. …
Many, many years ago, Kay Francis was the star of the month on TCM. I tell this story often, so I give my advance apologies to those who have heard me yammer about this before. TCM was new to our cable package at the time Kay was star of the …
