Mae Clarke | Famous grapefruit in the face scene with Cagney

Mae Clarke (August 16, 1910 – April 29, 1992) was born Violet Mary Klotz in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was an American film actress. She started her career as a dancer and subsequently starred in many films for Universal Studios, including the original screen version of The Front Page (1931) and the first sound version of Frankenstein (1931) with Boris Karloff. Clarke played the role of Dr. Frankenstein's fiancee in Frankenstein, who was attacked by the Monster (Karloff) on her wedding day.

The Public Enemy, released that same year, contained one of cinema's most famous (and frequently parodied) scenes, in which James Cagney pushed a half grapefruit into Clarke's face, then went out and picked up Jean Harlow. The film was so popular that it ran 24 hours a day at a theatre in Times Square upon its initial release, and Clarke's ex-husband had the grapefruit scene timed and would frequently buy a ticket, enter the theatre to enjoy that sequence, then leave the theatre.

She may be best known for her leading role as, "Myra Deauville," in the 1931 pre-Code version of, Waterloo Bridge. In the film, she portrays a young American woman who is forced by circumstance into a life of prostitution in World War I London. Both the film and Clarke's performance were well received by the critics.

She also appeared in the modest pre-code Universal film Night World (1932), with Lew Ayres, Boris Karloff, and Hedda Hopper.

By the mid-1930s though, Clarke was no longer a leading lady and was only featured in small or bit parts through the 1960s.

Mae Clarke was featured today on TCM in three films,

• The Good Bad Girl (1931)
• Three Wise Girls (1932)
• Final Edition (1932)

The French Lieutenant's Woman | Mise en abyme - story within a story

1. The French Lieutenant's Woman is a 1981 film staring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons. It was directed by Karel Reisz and adapted by playwright Harold Pinter. It is based on the novel of the same title by John Fowles.

The plot concerns the love affair between a Victorian gentleman and a woman who has been jilted by a French officer, scandalizing the "polite society" of Lyme Regis.

In the original book, the author is very much present - constantly addressing the reader directly and commenting on his characters, and on Victorian society in general, from his Twentieth-century perspective. A direct adaptation would have required a continual voice over.

Instead, the film creates the effect of the 19th Century society looked at from a 20th Century perspective by using the literary device or conceit, story within a story, in which one story is told during the action of another story. Mise en abyme is the French term for a similar literary device.

The 19th Century Victorian story is a film being shot in the present and the actors portraying the two Victorian characters having a love affair in their actual life, with the film shifting constantly between the two centuries. And though the actors are not bound by Victorian mores in their actual present-day lives, their affair still presents hard dilemmas since each is in a relationship to somebody else.

Also, instead of trying to create a literal translation of the novel's alternate endings, Pinter's screenplay adopted a more cinematic approach by having the characters' story ends one way, the actors' another.

Rare Marlon Brando screentest

I just watched Marlon Brando featured in TCM documentary "Brando" and I had to see find this footage. Fast forward to 3:49 for young Marlon profiling his magnificent face.

Alexandre Dumas | Inspiration for more than 200 Films has Mulatto Aristocratic Ancestry

TCM marathon of movies inspired me to Wikipedia the author behind so many of my beloved films. Classic and contemporary versions. I never tire of seeing his stories in yet another movie or TV adaption. I can usually feed off the costumes even if a bad screenplay starves me.

France has produced many great writers, none has been as widely read as Alexandre Dumas. His stories have been translated into almost a hundred languages, and have inspired more than 200 motion pictures.

He even warrants an IMDb page. Take look at the extensive list of films dated back to 1898 on

Alexandre Dumas père at the Internet Movie Database

(24 July 1802 – 5 December 1870) was a French writer, best known for his numerous historical novels of high adventure which have made him one of the most widely read French authors in the world. Many of his novels, including The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte de Bragelonne were serialized. He also wrote plays and magazine articles and was a prolific correspondent.

I'll share some facts beyond what I was taught in high school lit class. Some I was ignorant of until now.

Dumas' paternal grandparents were Marquis Alexandre-Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, a French nobleman, and Général commissaire in the Artillery in the colony of Saint Domingue, now Haiti, and Marie-Cesette Dumas, an Afro-Caribbean former slave.^[2][3] Their son, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, married Marie-Louise Élisabeth Labouret, the daughter of an innkeeper. Thomas-Alexandre was a general in Napoleon's army, who fell out of favor, rendering his family impoverished. Although Marie-Louise was unable to provide her son with much in the way of education, it did not hinder young Alexandre's love of books; and he read everything he could get his hands on.

Despite Alexandre Dumas' success and aristocratic connections, his being of mixed-race would affect him all his life. In 1843 he wrote a short novel, Georges, that addressed some of the issues of race and the effects of colonialism. He once remarked to a man who insulted him about his mixed-race background:

"My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my great grandfather a monkey. You see, Sir, my family starts where yours ends."

In 2002 under orders of the French President, Jacques Chirac, his body was exhumed from the cemetery where he had been born, and in a televised ceremony his new coffin, flanked by four Republican Guards (costumed as the Musketeers - Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and D'Artagnan) was transported in a solemn procession to the Panthéon of Paris, the great mausoleum where French luminaries are interred. In his speech President Chirac said:

"With you, we were D'Artagnan, Monte Cristo, or Balsamo, riding along the roads of France, touring battlefields, visiting palaces and castles — with you, we dream."

In that speech President Chirac acknowledged the racism that had existed, saying that a wrong had now been righted, with Alexandre Dumas enshrined alongside fellow authors Victor Hugo and Emile Zola.

The Horse's Mouth | "Gulley Jimson" paintings work of John Bratby

The Horse's Mouth is a 1958 film, directed by Ronald Neame. Alec Guinness wrote the Academy Award-nominated screenplay from the 1944 novel The Horse's Mouth by Joyce Cary, and also played the lead role of Gulley Jimson, a London artist.

Guinness' screenplay generally follows the book it was based on, but Guinness focused on Jimson's character and what it means to be an artist, rather than the social and political themes the book explored. He also deviates from the book's ending, where Jimson had suffered a stroke and was no longer able to paint.

The expressionistic "Jimson" paintings featured in the film were actually the work of John Bratby, a member of the English provincial realists artist known as the Kitchen Sink school.

Bratby's expressionistic style became known as "kitchen sink realism" after a painting of Bratby's which depicted a kitchen sink.

'Three Self Portraits with a White Wall' 1957, John Bratby »

Tate Gallery: John Bratby »

Singing Nun Sings "Dominique" -- Videoclip

The Singing Nun is a 1966 semi-biographical film about the life of Jeanine Deckers, a nun who recorded the chart-topping hit song "Dominique". It starred Debbie Reynolds in the title role. The rest of the cast included Ricardo Montalban, Greer Garson, Agnes Moorehead, Chad Everett, Katharine Ross and Ed Sullivan (as himself). It was the last film directed by Henry Koster.

Harry Sukman was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Music, Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment.