Talk About Cinema

The old phrase, “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” applies perfectly to Abbott and Costello in Hollywood . The team’s final MGM movie is a reworking of Buster Keaton’s first sound film, Free and Easy . Free and Easy is one of Keaton’s worst films; Hollywood is one of Abbott and Costello’s best. Buzz Curtis (Abbott) and Abercrombie (Costello) are a pair of barbers in a Hollywood salon. While cutting the hair of agent Norman Royce (Warner Anderson), they come across Jeff Parker (Robert Stanton), a singer who attempts to get Royce to sign him. At the urging of one of his clients, Gregory LeMaise (Carleton G. Young), he decides to pass on representing the boy, so Curtis and Abercrombie decide to take a shot and become Jeff’s agents. With the help of their friend Claire Warren (Frances Rafferty), they attempt to break Parker into show business. Continuing the tradition of the previous two features for MGM, Abbott and Costello are in top form and given plenty of sc...

The Phantom of the Opera may possibly be the most well-known Lon Chaney film. The fact that it’s in the public domain is probably a huge contributing factor, though I imagine the main reason is that this is one of the few horror films Chaney did. Despite how much the public associates him with the horror film genre, in reality, Chaney, Sr. didn’t actually make as many horror films as people might believe. The Phantom of the Opera is interesting for the fact that it does work as an entertaining horror film, despite how much it feels like it shouldn’t. Based off of the Gaston Leroux novel of the same name, The Phantom of the Opera  follows Christine Daaé (Mary Philbin), a singer at the Paris Opera House who is the understudy of lead singer Carlotta (Virginia Pearson in the original, Mary Fabian in the sound version). Christine has been training under the tutoring of a mysterious voice that lives in the Opera House. After being convinced to cut contact with her sweet...

The Naughty Nineties may as well have been called Abbott and Costello Perform “Who’s On First?” because that seems to be the one thing everyone remembers about this film. The rest of the film is basically ignored, and admittedly I can kind of see why, though I still think it’s a decent enough film. Captain Sam (Henry Travers) is the owner of a showboat called The River Queen, whose main stars are Sam’s daughter Caroline (Lois Collier) and Dexter Broadhurst (Bud Abbott). When Captain Sam accidentally gambles away 3/4 interest of his boat to a group of crooked gamblers, Caroline, Dexter, and crew worker Sebastian Dinwiddle (Lou Costello) must find a way to get rid of them. Let’s start with the film’s rendition of “Who’s On First?”. It’s good. I don’t think it’s the best rendition ( The Colgate Comedy Hour version has always been my preferred interpretation of the routine), but it’s still an energetic enough version of the routine, and it’s also the only full version to appear in a...