Jezebel - 1938

Jezebel Framed Art Print
16 in. x 22 in.

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Set in the mid-1800s New Orleans, a stylish, classic romantic melodrama about a headstrong, flamboyant Southern belle. To arouse the jealousy of her beau Preston Dillard (Fonda), willful, spiteful, tempestuous Julie Marsden (Davis) thoughtlessly and selfishly insists on wearing a scarlet red gown (rather than a virginal white one customarily worn by unmarried women) to the Olympus Ball - a major social function, defying social customs. She disgraces herself and is jilted by her embarrassed fiancee, who returns to Julie's plantation a year later. Without knowing that her estranged man has brought his new Yankee wife Amy (Lindsay), she surrenders to him. In further scheming, she rebounds and marries Southern gentleman Buck Cantrell (Brent), who dies in a duel unintentionally caused by her. Later, when Pres contracts deadly 'yellow jack' (yellow fever), she heroically redeems and atones for her transgressions by pleading with Amy to nurse his illness during the epidemic. In the final scene, she rides off with him in a wagon to certain death.

Frankenstein - 1931

Frankenstein 1931 Limited Edition
27 in. x 41 in.

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Framed


The classic horror film, adapted from Mary Shelley's famous 1818 novel, from the great director James Whale. With his hunchbacked, twitchy assistant Fritz (Frye), fanatical mad scientist Dr. Frankenstein (Clive) steals bodies from graves to assemble a creature - a mute, lumbering, flat-headed and browed Monster (Karloff) with visible facial scars, bolts in his neck and sunken eyes. Frankenstein shouts: "It's alive! Alive!" during the fantastic creation scene in his castle, when the hulking body comes alive with electricity harnassed from lightning. The revived, childlike brute with a criminal brain is misunderstood, and while playfully tossing flowers into a lake heaves in an innocent eight-year-old girl - who he imagines as another flower - to her drowning death.

Dracula - 1931

Dracula Art Print
23.62 in. x 31.5 in.

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The classic horror film, the first screen version of Bram Stoker's famous tale, that launched Bela Lugosi's career in his most famous role as the Transylvanian, blood-sucking vampire. Begins with a masterful twenty minutes, in the Carpathian Mountains at Count Dracula's castle, and Dracula's lugubrious introduction: "I...am...Dracula." British real-estate salesman Renfield (Frye) arrives at the dark castle to arrange for the sale of an English manor house to Count Dracula (Lugosi). Renfield becomes Dracula's demented slave as they return to London, where Dracula is smitten by Mina Seward (Chandler), but is fought off by vampire-hunter Van Helsing (Van Sloan). Followed by the sequel Dracula's Daughter. No Academy Award nominations.

The Awful Truth - 1937

Awful Truth Framed Art Print
16 in. x 22 in.

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A fast-paced, classic screwball romantic comedy of the 30's, starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in their first on-screen pairing. Jerry and Lucy Warriner (Grant and Dunne), a married, high-society couple who are convinced of infidelities (based on misunderstandings and other ridiculous reasons), file for divorce and separate for six months after a custody battle for their dog (Asta of The Thin Man films). During the interim, they verbally spar, sabotage and ruin each others' new relationships and romances - with handsome voice teacher Armand Duvalle (D'Arcy) and mother-dominated, millionaire Oklahoma rancher-hick Daniel Leeson (Bellamy), and singer Dixie Belle Lee (Compton). Before their divorce is finalized, they ultimately cannot resist each other and discover their mutual love. Academy Award Nominations: 6, including Best Picture, Best Actress--Irene Dunne, Best Supporting Actor--Ralph Bellamy, Best Screenplay, Best Film Editing. Academy Awards: 1, Best Director.

Wuthering Heights - 1939

Wuthering Heights Framed Art Print
16 in. x 22 in.

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Wuthering Heights (1939) is director William Wyler's somber tale of doomed and tragic love, conflicting passions, and revenge. It is considered one of Hollywood's all-time most romantic/drama classics. Filmed with haunting beauty, it is the first film dramatization of Emily Bronte's wildly passionate 1847 best-selling literary masterpiece, from a screenplay written by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (concentrating on the first two-thirds or 17 chapters of the 34 chapter book).

Producer Samuel Goldwyn felt the black-and-white film was the favorite of all his productions. It is still considered the definitive version - and one of the greatest romantic films ever made. Bronte's novel tells about the eternal, smoldering love between two soul-mates: adopted gypsy boy Heathcliff and manor-born Cathy, who loves both the stable-boy and her worldly neighbor Edgar. There were numerous other versions of the film, including: a silent version in 1920, director Luis Bunuel's Spanish-language version Abismos de Pasion (Depths of Passion) (1953), Robert Fuest's American International and UK version Wuthering Heights (1970) with Timothy Dalton and Anna Calder-Marshall in the lead roles, French director Jacques Rivette's Hurlevent (1985), Peter Kosminsky's faithfully-told Wuthering Heights (1992) with Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes, and a made-for-TV feature Wuthering Heights (1998) as part of the Masterpiece Theatre series.

The Wizard of Oz - 1939

Wizard of Oz, Judy Garland, 1939 Giclee Print
9 in. x 12 in.

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The Wizard of Oz (1939) is everybody's cherished favorite, perennial fantasy film musical from MGM during its golden years. For many seasons, it was featured regularly on network TV as a prime time event (its first two showings were on CBS television on November 3, 1956 and in December, 1959) and then annually for Thanksgiving, Christmas and/or Easter time. It soon became a classic institution, and a rite of passage for everyone, and probably has been seen by more people than any other motion picture over multiple decades. Initially, however, the film was not commercially successful (at $3 million), but it was critically acclaimed.

All of its images (the Yellow Brick Road, the Kansas twister), characters (e.g., Auntie Em, Toto, Dorothy, the Wicked Witch), dialogue (e.g., "Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!", "We're not in Kansas anymore," "Follow the Yellow Brick Road," or the film's final line: "There's no place like home"), and music ("Over the Rainbow") have become indelibly remembered, and the classic film has been honored with dozens of books, TV shows (such as HBO's dramatic prison series Oz), references in other films, and even by pop groups (singer Elton John with his Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road album, or Pink Floyd's 1973 album Dark Side of the Moon).

The film's plot is easily condensed: lonely and sad Kansas farmgirl Dorothy dreams of a better place, without torment against her dog Toto from a hateful neighbor spinster, so she plans to run away. During a fierce tornado, she is struck on the head and transported to a land 'beyond the rainbow' where she meets magical characters from her Kansas life transformed within her unconscious dream state. After travels down a Yellow Brick Road to the Land of Oz, and the defeat of the Wicked Witch of the West, Dorothy and her friends are rewarded by the Wizard of Oz with their hearts' desires - and Dorothy is enabled to return home to Kansas.

Top Hat - 1935

Top Hat Wall Mural
48 in. x 72 in.

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Top Hat (1935) is one of the great 30s dance musicals, and possibly the best, most characteristic and most profitable Astaire and Rogers musical ever, with wonderful, magical dance and song numbers (with straight-on, full-length views of the dancers without a lot of camera cuts or unusual camera angles). Its tagline was: "They're Dancing Cheek-to-Cheek Again."

Some consider it as a glorified re-make of their earlier film The Gay Divorcee (1934), with its familiar story of mistaken identity and a similar cast. The film's witty script, written specifically for Astaire and Rogers, was written by Dwight Taylor (author of The Gay Divorcee) and Allan Scott - and was based on the play The Girl Who Dared, by Alexander Farago and Aladar Laszlo.

This film, directed by Mark Sandrich (who directed five of the dance team's films - see * below), was the fourth of nine films that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers appeared in for RKO (between 1933 and 1939), and it became RKO's greatest box-office hit of the 30s (the moneymaker brought in $3 million).

Ninotchka - 1939

Ninotchka, Greta Garbo, 1939 Photographic Print
18 in. x 24 in.
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Ninotchka (1939) was the long-awaited, classic romantic comedy, with a clever and witty script and the magnificent presence of actress Greta Garbo in her first official American comedy (in her next-to-last film). The charming film about clashing ideologies (Soviet communism vs. capitalism) begins with Garbo portrayed at first as a humorless, cold, curt, deadpan, and seriously-austere Russian envoy (in a parody of her own stiff onscreen image), who soon melts and is transformed and softened by Parisian love (and a persuasive playboy Count) into a frivolous, romantic figure and converted Communist.

The charming, sparkling screenplay that satirizes the Communist political system with sexual humor was written by Billy Wilder (before he became a director), Charles Brackett and Walter Reisch, based on a screen story by Melchior Lengyel. They returned to a slightly similar theme two years later in their screenplay for Ball of Fire (1941). Other spin-offs of the Ninotchka theme include MGM's Comrade X (1940) with Clark Gable and Hedy Lamarr (in the Soviet Union), and The Iron Petticoat (1956) with Katharine Hepburn and Bob Hope (in London). The storyline also became the foundation for the Broadway (Cole Porter) stage musical Silk Stockings - that was later filmed by director Rouben Mamoulian in a 1957 film version with Cyd Charisse in Garbo's role opposite Fred Astaire.