RobertaReminder!!!!

...This Monday, March 27... The final (third) hour of the Palm Springs Antiques Roadshow will air on PBS (check local listings), which HAS to have Roberta Olden on it, getting a chair from Ginger's Library appraised! Not one of the ones shown here, but one that is 'telescoping', converting from a chair into a stepladder for library use...

I noticed these shows are available for view on the Antiques Roadshow website, but only for a few weeks - then you have to be a 'premium' PBS member... take notes.


Also, TWO GingerFilms will be shown at the TCM Film Festival (April 6-9, 2017):

Lady in the Dark - ...The promo still on the link is in black and white... hmmmm....wonder if that will be how it is shown? I'm thinking not - hopefully will be a 'clean copy' of the color... I'm not up on all the film type details, but 'nitrite' is included, which I thought was a ticking time bomb... hopefully it is 'preserved'... one that would be awesome with a 'clean' DVD offering from Paramount, or whomever owns the rights to this one...

Rafter Romance - One of Dale Tremont's favorites, and mine as well... not sure if this one is any 'cleaner' copy than the TCM DVDs from a few years back, but... will be cool to see on the big screen...it's noted that film critic Leonard Maltin will be in attendance...

Hopefully some of y'all can make the festival... if so, reports will be nice - especially stuff regarding Maltin's comments at the RR screening... most likely will be over on FaceBook,, so y'all stay tuned over there...

Finally, just noting there's lots of things cooking here in South Gingerville, so.. hope to squeeze in a post every now and then... again, FaceBook will be visited as most of us now do... the 'comments' on here for posts are generally non-existent... oh well... it appears there are still quite a few folks checking the site out...it's all good!

Y'all have a VERY Gingery Weekend!!!

KIG!
Hu
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Robert Osborne - 1932 - 2017 ...Gingerology remembrance of TCM's Guru of Classics

...Sad news for ALL lovers of classic films, as TCM's classic film guru, Robert Osborne, has passed away.

Robert seemed to be a fan of ALL classic movies, actors, actresses, studios, and whatever else you can relate to the classic films. Here is TCM's website information:

TCM remembrance of Robert Osborne 1932 - 2017 

There is no doubt that Mr. Osborne was a BIG Ginger fan... here's a 'liner note' he did for the Kitty Foyle radio show album from the 70s, which I originally transcribed for a post on the 70th anniversary of Kitty Foyle's release - here it is:

Ginger Rogers once told a reporter, “Kitty Foyle was my first picture. It was my mother who made all those pictures with Fred Astaire.” The lady was kidding, of course, but there is no denying that everything connected with the spectacular Rogers career dates B.K. (Before Kitty) and A.K. (After Kitty). The Foyle role fit her like a coat of enamel, won her an Academy Award and kept her from being known solely as part of something called Astairenrogers.

Kitty Foyle was made at RKO Radio Studios in Hollywood in 1940, long after blonde and bouncy Ginger had been established as Fred Astaire’s most popular on-screen partner. She’d also proven her solo box office worth in a few comedies of her own. Up to that point, however, she hadn’t been established as an actress (and no fault of her own, but critics and the public have always assumed performances in musicals and comedies require no acting prowess, only nervous feet). One day she’d had quite enough, put down her foot – one of the unnervous ones – and divorced Fred as a partner. “No more musicals!” she told her bosses. While they ran for the aspirin bottle, Ginger started looking for a juicy role.

Enter Kitty Foyle, the most popular literary heroine of the day – and the timing couldn’t have been better. Kitty was the creation of author Christopher Morley, a hard-working white collar girl who was fed up to her typewriter ribbons. “I read about the guts of the pioneer woman, and the woman of the dust bowl, and the gingham goddess of the covered wagon,” says Kitty. “What about the woman of the covered typewriter? What has she got when she leaves the office?” It wasn’t all work for Kitty – she also had to choose between a liaison with a rich, married socialite and a romance with an industrious young doctor. But the public loved her, and every actress in the movie world wanted to play her. RKO, meanwhile, bought the screen rights and Ginger snapped it up. She darkened her hair, replaced the usual maribo feathers with a working girl’s wardrobe and went to town on the part, turning in a performance that made one critic clap his hands in glee, writing “Ginger Rogers plays Kitty Foyle so well it’s hard to remember she ever danced her way to fame.” The flourishing, epic touch came when she won that hard-to-get Oscar over the likes of Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Martha Scott and Joan Fontaine. Goodbye, Fred!

In the years that followed, Ginger got to play everything from gum-chewing molls and ex-convicts to Dolly Madison and Dolly Levi, all thanks in great measure to that first encounter with Ms. Foyle. Her movie career has been long winded (36 active years, 73 major films), quite dazzling, an audience pleaser, always fun to watch. And despite the enduring fame of Astaire n’ Rogers, Rogers n’ Astaire, she is still best remembered as Kitty Foyle, the white collar girl. Their names remain synonymous. This is a permanent record of that collaboration – and proof the lady known as Ginger could do very well indeed without the hint of a Carioca, a Continental or a Castle Walk in reel three.

ROBERT OSBORNE, author of Academy Awards Illustrated and four other books on motion pictures. (circa 1975)

I feel sure that he would have wanted to attend the upcoming Ginger Festival...

HERE is the DVD intro to Ginger's Paramount classic, The Major and the Minor" (from the TCM website) which is also included on the Universal DVD.

The thing about Osborne was he could give his 60-second 'intro' to ANY given film to air on TCM, and make you want to check it out... ...the 'behind the making of the film' info he had was truly unparalleled - talk about someone who had forgotten more about movies than all of us collectively will EVER know!

Robert Osborne was a champion of the Golden Era which Ginger and SO many other incredible actors and actresses created, and his presence will be sorely missed on TCM, as well as in the classic film community.

VKMfanHuey
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