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On July 23, 1937, MGM unveiled in theaters Saratoga, a star vehicle for Jean Harlow, who had died suddenly weeks earlier. Additional shooting was needed to complete the film, which featured the actress alongside Clark Gable. The Hollywood Reporter’s original review, headlined “‘Saratoga’ Warmly Greeted … Jean Harlow’s Last Earns High Praise,” is below:

Jean Harlow’s last picture, Saratoga, cannot be reviewed unemotionally. It can only be reported.

Audience reception at a preview last evening in Glendale was unmistakably enthusiastic. Possibly surprised, but never shocked by the fact that the story is a riotous comedy, each time Miss Harlow’s name appeared on the screen and upon the occasion of her first entrance the house rocked with applause. It was more than cursory hand-clapping. The final hand was in honest appreciation of an honestly entertaining offering, splendidly performed, written and directed.

The production by Bernard H. Hyman, with John Emerson as associate producer,...

[Saratoga Springs, NY] — February 9, 2023 Mary Birnbaum, a decorated opera director, takes the reins of Opera Saratoga ahead of the 2023 summer festival season.

Opera Saratoga’s board of directors announces that Mary Birnbaum has been named the company’s new general and artistic director. She succeeds former General and Artistic Director Lawrence Edelson, whose eight year tenure concluded at the end of the 2022 season. Birnbaum is the tenth general director in the Opera Saratoga’s celebrated history. Board President Steve Rosenblum shared, “We are incredibly excited and honored to have Mary Birnbaum join Opera Saratoga. She was selected after an extensive nationwide search, in which we interviewed many highly qualified candidates. Mary’s level of enthusiasm and love of opera are infectious and I am certain she will be an inspirational leader for the company as well as an integral part of the Saratoga Springs community.”

Birnbaum is a stage director, educator, and artistic leader,...

Hattie McDaniel as Mammy in ‘Gone with the Wind’: TCM schedule on August 20, 2013 (photo: Vivien Leigh and Hattie McDaniel in ‘Gone with the Wind’) See previous post: “Hattie McDaniel: Oscar Winner Makes History.” 3:00 Am Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943). Director: David Butler. Cast: Joan Leslie, Dennis Morgan, Eddie Cantor, Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Errol Flynn, John Garfield, Ida Lupino, Ann Sheridan, Dinah Shore, Alexis Smith, Jack Carson, Alan Hale, George Tobias, Edward Everett Horton, S.Z. Sakall, Hattie McDaniel, Ruth Donnelly, Don Wilson, Spike Jones, Henry Armetta, Leah Baird, Willie Best, Monte Blue, James Burke, David Butler, Stanley Clements, William Desmond, Ralph Dunn, Frank Faylen, James Flavin, Creighton Hale, Sam Harris, Paul Harvey, Mark Hellinger, Brandon Hurst, Charles Irwin, Noble Johnson, Mike Mazurki, Fred Kelsey, Frank Mayo, Joyce Reynolds, Mary Treen, Doodles Weaver. Bw-127 mins. 5:15 Am Janie (1944). Director: Michael Curtiz. Cast: Joyce Reynolds, Robert Hutton,...

Jean Harlow was the first bombshell. Sure, there were silent-era predecessors, but our 'modern day' notion of the siren really started with Harlow. Mostly because of the platinum hair, which led legions to the peroxide bottle. (We've since never recovered from blonde worship.) Before she glided onto the silver screen, clad in liquid satin with that perfect '30s look comprised of thin brows, pouty lips and shining waves, the sexbombs were usually dark-haired. Think: Clara Bow, Louise Brooks and Norma Shearer.

If Bow was the "It Girl" that defined the 20s, Harlow was quintessentially 1930s. She could bridge the giant gap between classes -- she looked like a socialite but had plenty of sass, which ensured mass appeal. Her blondeness became her legend, promoted as "rare" though the modern-day eye would call it "bizarrely unnatural." Howard Hughes, who directed Harlow in her breakthrough role in "Hell's Angels," christened the...

A rundown of the impacts those iron horses have made on the silver screen

This week's Clip joint is by John Carvill. Think you can do better? Email your idea for a future Clip joint to adam.boult@guardian.co.uk.

Ever since the infamous arrival of the Lumiere Brothers' locomotive at La Ciotat Station in 1895, trains have been cinematically significant. Those big old iron horses always made for suitably impressive and technologically exciting cinematic subject matter, of course; but they also offered a compelling metaphor for the experience of cinema itself. Consider, for example, the complex relationship between motion and stasis inherent in each of these experiences: the sedentary train passenger, on a moving train, watching through the 'frame' of a window as the slumbering countryside apparently whips by; the eyes of the seated cinema audience member, presented with a sufficiently swift and numerous succession of static celluloid frames,...

One of MGM's brightest stars of the 1930s, Jean Harlow died of uremic poisoning in 1937. At the time, the 26-year-old actress had been playing opposite Clark Gable in what turned out to be her last film, Saratoga. Perhaps because she died so young, Harlow has remained a well-known film personality from that era. Her MGM vehicles — Dinner at 8, Bombshell, China Seas, Wife vs. Secretary, Libeled Lady — are often shown on Turner Classic Movies; David Stenn has written a well-regarded biography; and now comes Mark Vieira and Darrell Rooney's Harlow in Hollywood: The Blonde Bombshell in the Glamour Capital 1928-1937 (Angel City Press, 2011). Celebrating Jean Harlow's centenary (she was born on March 3, 1911), Harlow in Hollywood is a both a written and a (stunning) visual chronicle of Jean Harlow's career, as Vieira and Rooney cover Harlow's ascendancy from movie extra and bit player in the late 1920s [...]...

From TCM’s Classic Movie Blog:

McDaniel took what might have been a clichéd role embodying the ugliest of racial stereotypes and transformed it into a portrait of human being of considerable complexity, endowing her character with a rich blend of humor, empathy, and intelligence. While the story did not acknowledge her character’s life when white people weren’t around, a viewer would have to be quite obtuse not to recognize her vital sense of her own power and her intuitive understanding of others. This is particularly true of Scarlett (Vivien Leigh), whose ploys she readily sees through, but there is also a particularly sympathetic affinity passing between Mammy and the realistic and dashing Rhett Butler, who was played by Clark Gable, an actor who had enjoyed working with her previously in China Seas (1935-Tay Garnett) and Saratoga (1937-Jack Conway). (If you have a chance, see Saratoga...