Beautifully directed by George Marshall, with much of the sensibility he brought to Destry Rides Again (1939), but boringly written (by Claude Binyon and Frank Butler) and monotonously acted by Betty Hutton, though with considerable verve and some dignity, Incendiary Blonde is a distinct disappointment. Hutton plays here an actual person: early twentieth-century entertainer Texas […]

Extravagant though the production may be, writer-director Erich von Stroheim’s The Merry Widow is also sardonic and incisive. Inspired, of course, by Franz Lehar’s 1905 operetta, it was largely dismissed by Stroheim, who may have found its resounding financial success ill-suited to his self-image; but, surely, the idea of a silent work based on any […]