Café Muscato Posted by Muscato on July 9, 2016

A quiet weekend at home, and herewith few random notes on life chez nous, at least a part of which will explain the choice of dear Mrs. Mortenson Baker Monroe DiMaggio Miller indulging herself in a little treat... We are at last having a genuine summer weekend - hot, clear,...   read more

Café Muscato Posted by Muscato on July 4, 2016

Carissimi, I have a shocking admission to make... Until this weekend, I had never seen Valley of the Dolls. Or rather, as I'm a Confirmed Bachelor of a Certain Age, I'd never seen all of Valley of the Dolls, since the picture is more or less a string of Big...   read more

Café Muscato Posted by Muscato on July 1, 2016

So she's 100 today, this dewy-eyed ingenue. I suppose it's hindsight, but it seems to me that even here, at the very earliest end of her long journey, there's more to her than meets the eye. Now, some 80 years later, it's indisputable: Miss Olivia de Havilland is very much...   read more

Café Muscato Posted by Muscato on May 15, 2016

It wasn't a grand career - but it did include one of the most stirring moments ever put on film. I hope that Madeleine LeBeau - gone this weekend to meet Rick over at his new place in Fabulon - knows what she meant to all of us who love...   read more

Café Muscato Posted by Muscato on April 12, 2016

We need a little cheering up hereabouts, and who better to take on that daunting task than birthday girl, the heavenly Miss Ann Miller? We catch her here, indomitable and not even tapping, on Merv. She starts with a fragment of Mame, as if to set the mise en scène,...   read more

Café Muscato Posted by Muscato on March 22, 2016

When you've been feeling gloomy - crummy, even - sometimes all you need is a little shot of pure adrenaline. Enter Miss Ann Miller, stage right. I don't know about you, but just thinking about Annie, let alone catching her in a new-to-me fab number - and then let alone...   read more

Café Muscato Posted by Muscato on February 10, 2016

...and Swede. For no good reason, other than that it's February-cold, midwinter-damp, and just generally a tad dreary, this seems like the kind of week that might require a Garbo moment. And so let's have one. Sometimes Metro seems to have spent an inordinate amount of time testing just how...   read more

Café Muscato Posted by Muscato on February 6, 2016

Even in the midst of the clamorous, ridiculous, so often tedious parade that is Facebook, sometimes something stops you in your tracks. This went past a few days ago, and I've just spent a considerable amount of time tracking it down to that, in case you missed it, you too...   read more

Café Muscato Posted by Muscato on December 30, 2015

I wonder, a lot, if I spend too much time online, to the detriment of filling my mind, such as it is, with better things. For example, for someone who thinks and reads about movies as much as I do, I'm sometimes surprised I don't see more of them. And...   read more

Café Muscato Posted by Muscato on December 27, 2015

The extraordinary creature born Marie Magdalene Dietrich was a belated Christmas present to the world some 114 years ago today. Here we catch her at one of her mid-career heights, as the slyly seductive chanteuse Erika von Schlütow in Billy Wilder's wildly underappreciated 1948 picture A Foreign Af   read more

Café Muscato Posted by Muscato on December 22, 2015

Trust Loretta Young to have everything ready days in advance. Even at the holidays she annnoys me. Actually, I can't hate on her too much here - she looks willing to kid herself, and I'd kill for the coat (even if I'd likely be killed for wearing it in public...   read more

Café Muscato Posted by Muscato on December 14, 2015

Trust dear Miss Alice Faye to have the perfect seasonal outfit. What could be better for lolling by a Yuletide fire - trying to decide between Don Ameche and John Payne while fending off the attentions of the Ritz Brothers and waiting for the arrival of the Albertina Rasch Dancer,...   read more

Café Muscato Posted by Muscato on October 25, 2015

Like most great stars, she had a face the camera loved; even more, she had a coloring that the tricky, fickle Technicolor camera turned into something as rich as cream and as a invigorating as a dose of cinnamon. Maureen O'Hara, dead alas at 95, was only one of many...   read more

Café Muscato Posted by Muscato on September 8, 2015

I don't believe I'd thought of Martin Milner, in anything more than the most fleeting of ways, in 20 years, at least until the sad news of his journey to Fabulon came out over the weekend. His was never the biggest or most serious of careers, and he leaves at...   read more

Café Muscato Posted by Muscato on August 30, 2015

Isn't it nice when a National Treasure gets to remind us how she got that way? As a film, Grandma is built from the ground up for Lily Tomlin, and while it may not be a deathless example of cinematic art on the whole, she wrings every drop from it....   read more

Café Muscato Posted by Muscato on July 24, 2015

No, this one I didn't see at the National Portrait Gallery. But, if the price is right, it could be yours - it's up for auction on e-Bay. By Bay Area artist Anthony De Frange, the painting is one of many starry portraits he did in the '60s and '70s....   read more

Café Muscato Posted by Muscato on July 10, 2015

Goodnight, sweet prince... He was, simply put, handsomeness incarnate. The pride of Egyptian cinema, chosen - at least according to local lore - from a handful of promising young leading men for international stardom in the early sixties and even today the only first-rank world player drawn from E   read more

Café Muscato Posted by Muscato on July 1, 2015

...but at least this year Joan Fontaine isn't one of them. Many happy returns on her 99th to the one and only Miss Olivia de Havilland. I hope that she's up for a little celebration; Paris, after all, is lovely this time of year.   read more

Café Muscato Posted by Muscato on July 1, 2015

...but at least this year Joan Fontaine isn't one of them. Many happy returns on her 99th to the one and only Miss Olivia de Havilland. I hope that she's up for a little celebration; Paris, after all, is lovely this time of year. As, I'm sure, is she.   read more

Café Muscato Posted by Muscato on June 30, 2015

From the first moments of 1947's Possessed, Joan Crawford sketches a character different from, deeper than, and profoundly stranger than any I've seen her play in what was even then her two decades on screen. I'm embarrassed to say that until yesterday, I'd not seen this one. Somehow I vaguely...   read more