In this episode of our Gloria Grahame Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, our protagonist is rudely shoved into the background of the movies, barely appearing in Josef von Sternberg's Macao (1950) (she would have liked to have appeared in it even less) and playing a rote schemer in David Miller's Sudden Fear (1952). The movies themselves don't make up for her under-use, despite the amiable pairing of Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell in the former and the great Joan Crawford sobbing her way to an Oscar nomination in the latter. We do our best to articulate what went wrong for us, before turning our attention to James Gunn's Superman (2025) in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment. Gunn's approach triggers Dave's superhero comics nostalgia, but Elise is skeptical.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: MACAO (1952) [dir. Josef von Sternberg]

0h 22m 52s: SUDDEN FEAR (1953) [dir. David Miller]

0h 42m 15s: Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – James Gunn’s Superman (2025) at the Scotiabank Theatre on Richmond Street

Excerpt on Macao from Josef von Sternberg’s Fun in a Chinese Laundry

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

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For this round of Paramount 1932, we watched our first Marx Brothers movie for the podcast (hard as that is to believe), Horse Feathers (directed by Norman Z. MacLeod), alongside Ernst Lubitsch's only sound-era drama, Broken Lullaby. Lubitsch's batshit WWI melodrama, bursting with intensity and unease, claims our attention first, and then we turn to the detached anarchy of the Marx Brothers. Elise probes Dave's obsession with their antics and offers her outsider's take on the poetics of their personas for his contemplation.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: Paramount and 1932

0h 08m 41s: THE MAN I KILLED aka BROKEN LULLABY [dir. Ernst Lubitsch)

0h 41m 01s: HORSE FEATHERS [dir. Norman Z. McLeod]

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Paramount Story by John Douglas Eames

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

1932 Information from Forgotten Films to Remember by John Springer

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* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

This week in our Gloria Grahame Acteurist Oeuvre-view we watched one of her best-known films, In a Lonely Place (1950), directed by Nicholas Ray and co-starring Humphrey Bogart, alongside the unpromising Cecil B. DeMille circus drama The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). This may be the only time you find these two movies discussed together with roughly equal enthusiasm. Ray's portrait of a romance doomed by male violence may have psychological perception and stylish writing, but DeMille's Technicolor spectacle has a clown with a dark secret (played by Jimmy Stewart no less), Cornel Wilde shirtless in tight pants, a train wreck, the blood transfusion bonding trope, and of course, a love-crazed Nazi dangling an elephant's foot over Gloria Grahame's face. Unhinged Bogart meets unhinged DeMille, brought together by our Acteur giving restrained performances as wary observers.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: IN A LONELY PLACE (1950) [dir. Nicholas Ray]

0h 41m 24s: THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH [dir. Cecil B. DeMille]

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!