Glamour Girls: The Leading Ladies Five-Pack (Love Me Tonight / The Blue Angel / Pandora and the Flying Dutchman / The Good Fairy / Lured)

Studio: Kino International Release Date: 11/21/2006

Five different Hollywood queens are represented in Glamour Girls, a fun Kino compendium of Golden Age titles. The entertainment value of this batch almost makes you overlook the fact that the movies have nothing to do with each other. The oldest film is The Blue Angel, the legendary 1930 classic (filmed in Germany by American director Josef von Sternberg) that made Marlene Dietrich an instant star. The story of an eminent professor (Emil Jannings) brought to his knees by seductive showgirl Lola Lola (that's Marlene) never loses its power, and von Sternberg's eye for voluptuous chiaroscuro and exquisite sado-masochism is fully expressed (he and Dietrich would make six more films at Paramount in the following half-decade). One important note: this is the English-language version of the picture (not dubbed, but shot concurrently with the superior German-language version).
Love Me Tonight is the best movie musical you've never heard of, a deliciously clever 1932 romp with Maurice Chevalier as a poor Paris tailor and Jeannette MacDonald as a wealthy aristocrat. Rouben Mamoulian's direction is a landmark of early-sound ingenuity, and the Rodgers and Hart score includes such goodies as "Isn't It Romantic?" (given an epic treatment here), "Lover," and "Mimi." The Good Fairy, from 1935, showcases the wonderful Margaret Sullavan, the throaty-voiced actress whose quicksilver reactions look as fresh and delightful today as they were 70 years ago. Sullavan begins the comedy as an orphan, becomes a theater usherette, and eventually becomes involved with meatpacking magnate Frank Morgan and bewhiskered lawyer Herbert Marshall. The matching of director William Wyler and screenwriter Preston Sturges is not a natural one, to be sure, and Wyler's direction tends to weigh the film down (he was, however, enchanted by Sullavan, whom he married--briefly). The great Sturges patter shines through, and you'll adore Sullavan.
1947's Lured puts pre-TV Lucille Ball in London, where a murderer is killing women he meets through the personal ads. The whodunit isn't difficult to guess, but director Douglas Sirk brings his elegant German precision to the proceedings, and George Sanders and Boris Karloff head a nifty cast of supporting folk. Finally, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951) matches Ava Gardner and James Mason in a daft blend of mythology and Hemingwayesque Lost Generation stuff. Ava is surrounded by dashing suitors, but Mason's mystery man lures her into the realm of myth. The movie's got giggle-worthy plot twists and great Technicolor, to say nothing of glamour. --Robert Horton

German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 1583/1, 1927-1928. Photo: UFA. Handsome English actor Warwick Ward (1891 – 1967) appeared in 64 British, American, German as well as French films between 1919 and 1933. These included such silent masterpieces as Madame Sans-Gene (1925) and Variete/Variety (1925). He also produced 19 British films between 1931 and 1958. Warwick Ward was born in St. Ives in 1991. During the early 1920’s he appeared in several silent British films. His film debut was the sports drama The Silver Lining (1919, A.E Coleby). The following year he appeared in the Emily Bronte adaptation Wuthering Heights (1920, A.V. Bramble) starring Milton Rosmer as Heathcliff and Colette Brettel as Cathy. He appeared with Victor McLaglen in The Call of the Road (1920, A.E. Coleby) and in Corinthian Jack (1921, W. Courtney Rowden), with Henry Ainley in Build Thy House (1920, Fred Goodwins), and with Milton Rosmer and Evelyn Brent in the drama Demos (1921, Denison Clift), which is considered now to be lost. That year he also appeared in Belphegor the Mountebank (1921, Bert Wynne), a British silent film starring Milton Rosmer. It was based on the play Belphegor, the mountebank: or, Woman's constancy (ca. 1850) by Charles Webb about a nobleman who is forced to take up the life of a traveling showman. Another lost film is the drama Tell Your Children (1922, Donald Crisp) for which Alfred Hitchcock is credited as the title designer. That year he also appeared in the British-Dutch action film Bulldog Brummond (1922, Oscar Apfel). Hal Erickson writes at Rovi: “Filmed in England, this first movie version of the stage melodrama Bulldog Drummond featured a miscast Carlyle Blackwell in the title role. Captain Hugh ‘Bulldog’ Drummond, the soldier of fortune created by ‘Sapper’ (H.C. McNeile), was a combination old-school-tie British gentleman and brutish fascist. Blackwell could handle the ‘gentleman’ part, but wasn't quite up to the tough, two-fisted aspects of the character. Still, the story itself is a good one: Bored by inactivity, Drummond advertises for ‘adventure’ in the Times, and gets adventure aplenty when he becomes involved with a plot to kidnap an industrialist. The film's tension highlight was the scene in which the villainous Lakington (Warwick Ward) taunts a bound Drummond by fondling unconscious heroine Phyllis Benton (Evelyn Greeley)”. Ward then starred opposite Violet Hopson in the sports films The Lady Owner (1923, Walter West) and The Great Turf Mystery (1924, Walter West), opposite Lillian Hall-Davis in the crime drama The Hotel Mouse (1923, Fred Paul) and opposite Betty Blythe in Southern Love/A Woman's Secret (1924, Herbert Wilcox). The latter was based on the poem The Spanish Student by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow about the young gypsy Dolores, who escapes from an arranged marriage and makes a living as a dancer. Warwick Ward moved to France to appear opposite Hollywood diva Gloria Swanson in Madame Sans-Gene (1925, Leonce Perret), a silent Famous Players-Lasky production by Jesse L. Lasky and Adolph Zukor. Swanson made this romantic comedy/costume drama while on an extended vacation. She helped to secure many of the filming locations (Chateau Fontainebleau, for example) herself. Soon she became involved with her interpreter Henri de la Falaise, a Marquis, although he was a not very wealthy. He later became her third husband. Before her death, Swanson yearned to see this film. She considered it as her best work, but sadly the film is lost. After this Paris adventure,Ward moved to Europe’s film capital at the time, Berlin. There he played in another silent classic, Variete/Variety (1925, Ewald Andre Dupont), based on the novel Der Eid des Stephan Huller (1923) by Friedrich Hollander (Felix Hollaender). The film tells the story of a carnival concessionaire (Emil Jannings), his alluring girlfriend (Lya de Putti), and the handsome acrobat (Warwick Ward) who comes between them. Feeling doubly impotent because he himself had been a famous aerialist before suffering a crippling accident, Jannings fantasizes about killing his rival - and, finally, does so. The trapeze scenes were set in the Berlin Wintergarten theatre and camera man Karl Freund let the camera swing from long shot to close-up, like the acrobats. The results astounded international audiences. Ward stayed in Germany for such silent films as Die Fahrt ins Abenteuer/The Wooing of Eve (1926, Max Mack) with Ossi Oswalda, the UFA adventure film Die Frauengasse von Algier/Streets of Algiers (1927, Wolfgang Hoffmann-Harnisch) with Maria Jacobini and Camilla Horn, and Die beruhmte Frau/The Famous Woman (1927, Robert Wiene) with Lili Damita. One of his best late silent films is the circus melodrama Die Todesschleife/Looping the Loop (1928, Arthur Robison) starring Werner Krauss as a clown with ward as the handsome acrobat who steals the clown’s pretty girl (Jenny Jugo). Another masterpiece was Die wunderbare Luge der

French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no 218. Photo: Teddy Piaz. French film actor Roger Duchesne (1906 - 1996) appeared in 30 films between 1934 and 1957. He is best remembered as the silver haired gangster Bob in Jean-Pierre Melville's policier Bob le flambeur/Bob the Gambler (1956). Roger Duchesne was born as Roger Andre Charles Jordens in Luxeuil-les-Bains, France in 1906. He started his film career in 1934 with Vers l'abime (1934, Hans Steinhoff, Serge Veber) starring Raymond Rouleau and Brigitte Helm, a French language version of the UFA production Die Insel (1934, Hans Steinhoff). He played his first lead in the spy film Les loups entre eux/The Wolves Among Them (1936, Leon Mathot) opposite Jules Berry. He also co-starred that year in the innovative Le roman d'un tricheur/Confessions of a Cheat (1936, Sacha Guitry) starring Guitry and his wife Jacqueline Delubac. James Travers writes at Films de France: “Regarded as one of Sacha Guitry’s best films, Le Roman d’un tricheur is a hugely entertaining comedy, featuring some unforgettable visual comic gags. Having no dialogue, the film is perhaps best described a silent film with voice-over commentary, in which the film’s central character (the cheat, played by Guitry himself) narrates the story of his life.” Another interesting film was the comedy Messieurs les ronds de cuir/The Bureaucrats (1937, Yves Mirande) with Lucien Baroux and Arletty. He also appeared in Le Golem (1936, Julien Duvivier). Hal Erickson notes at Rovi: “Filmed in Czechoslovakia, this French-language adaptation of the oft-filmed Jewish folk tale The Golem was one of the most expensive productions ever made in that country. The story, which some have cited as a precursor to Frankenstein, is set in Prague's Jewish Ghetto. Fearing an anti-Semitic pogrom at the hands of Emperor Rudolf (Harry Baur), Rabbi Jacob (Charles Dorat) magically brings a statue to life to protect his people from harm.” In the espionage drama Gibraltar/It Happened in Gibraltar (1938, Fyodor Otsep a.k.a. Fedor Ozep), he co-starred with Viviane Romance, and Erich von Stroheim, who also co-wrote the script. He also appeared in the melodrama Tempete Sur L'Asie/Storm over Asia (1938, Richard Oswald) which featured Conrad Veidt as a soldier of fortune who spearheads an expedition in Mongolia in hopes of finding hitherto untapped oil reserves. Roger Duchesne continued to work after the Nazis had occupied France. He co-starred in Montmartre-sur-Seine (1941, Georges Lacombe) starring Edith Piaf and Jean-Louis Barrault. Other popular films during the war period were La femme perdue/The Lost Woman (1942, Jean Choux) starring Renee Saint-Cyr, and the entertaining Fernandel farce Adrien (1943, Fernandel). In September 1944, Duchesne was arrested while hiding in Paris, accused of having worked for the Gestapo. Then there was a gap in his film career of more than ten years. Roger Duchesne made a great come-back with Bob le flambeur/Bob the Gambler (1956), a gangster film directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. He starred in the title role as the old, silver-haired gangster and gambler Bob, living in the Montmartre district of Paris, who experiences a run of bad luck that leaves him nearly broke. Duchesne made of Bob a gentleman with scruples. The film is often considered a film noir and precursor to the French Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) because of its use of handheld camera and a single jump cut. The engaging and witty film was only the director's fourth film, made before Melville had access to the bigger budgets and the bigger stars (Jean-Paul Belmondo, Alain Delon) of his later pictures. However, Bob le Flambeur was not a great commercial success on its first release. Duchesne made only one more film, Marchands de filles/Sellers of Girls (1957, Maurice Cloche), a crime drama about poor woman (Agnes Laurent) who finds herself the victim of a group of white slavers and drug smugglers. The criminals take the woman to South America, where she teams up with a mysterious stranger (Georges Marchal) in an effort to defeat her captors and find her way back home. It would be his final film and not much is known about his further life.. Roger Duchesne died in 1996 in Les Mureaux, France. Sources: Hal Erickson (Rovi), James Travers (Films de France), Wikipedia (English and French) and IMDb.

In a country of junk-filled attics, yard sales, and flea markets frequented by millions of Antiques Roadshow viewers hoping to uncover a grungy chest of drawers worth millions, the Keno twins have become the Siskel and Ebert of antiques. Dapper, witty, and in their early forties (with nearly 60 years of combined experience between them), they symbolize the union of amateur enthusiasm and acute professionalism that has made their television program a cultural phenomenon. Now, in this fascinating collection of tales of their personal adventures hunting -- and discovering -- priceless "junk" (including some notable Roadshow success stories), readers will learn how to see the extraordinary in the mundane. "Hidden Treasures" is part history lesson and part treasure map for finding valuable antiques where they would be least expected.

Leigh and Leslie Keno are twins with a single passion--the pursuit of American antiques. One (Leigh) is an antiques dealer in New York. The other (Leslie) is a director at Sotheby's, New York. Together with Joan Barzilay Freund--a New York-based freelance writer who specializes in American antiques--they tell tales of the hunt.
Some of the stories come from the twins' childhood in upstate New York (they started keeping antiques dealer diaries when they were 12); one riveting anecdote is set more recently in the auction room of Sotheby's, circa January 1999. But all of the treasure-hunting episodes are imbued with the drama and thrill of the chase as well as the bliss of aesthetic appreciation.
It doesn't matter whether you, yourself, have swapped bids in tense auction rooms for million-dollar furnishings, or traipsed through small-town flea markets in search of sleepers, or gained the bulk of your antiquing know-how while firmly planted in your easy chair watching the Antiques Roadshow. Because the Keno twins know their stuff and they evoke the rich details of antiques, such as the creamy surfaces of 18th-century ceramics and the plum-pudding mahogany sheen to the rare secretary bookshelf. The passion that drives them is evident on every page of the book, and that emotion is the hook that allows them to so effectively share their fascination with the reader. To read their stories is to enter their world, and while the color photographs are certainly appreciated, the prose does a fine job by itself to portray the lure of the Seymour table and the Canton ginger jar. Along the way, the life stories and distinctive personalities of the twins come through, too. By time you finish the final chapter, you will have learned a lot about American antiques, and even more about the happy souls of two brothers pursuing their craft. --Stephanie Gold