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There's No Business Like Show Business
:Description:An all-star cast that includes Ethel Merman, Dan Dailey, Marilyn Monroe, Donald O'Connor, Johnnie Ray and Mitzi Gaynor sparks this tuneful Irving Berlin musical that depicts the trials and triumphs of a veteran vaudeville family. Molly (Merman) and Terry (Dailey) Donahue start out as a duo and keep adding kids to the act until they finally become The 5 Donahues. Their busy, sometimes tumultuous lives aren't always easy, but the Donahues have plenty of love to get them through the hard times and more than enough talent to keep them on top. Highlighted ...
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Some Like It Hot (1959)
:Description:When Chicago musicians Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) accidentally witness a gangland shooting, they quickly board a southbound train to Florida, disguised as Josephine and Daphne, the twonewestand homeliestmembers of an all-girl jazz band. Their cover is perfect...until a lovelorn singer (Marilyn Monroe) falls for Josephine, an ancient playboy (Joe E. Brown) falls for Daphne, and a mob boss (George Raft) refuses to fall for their hoax! Nominated* for 6 Academy Awards(r), Some Like It Hot is the quintessential madcap farce and one of the greatest of all film comedies (The ...
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All About Eve
: essential video:Showered with Oscars, this wonderfully bitchy (and witty) comedy written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz concerns an aging theater star (Bette Davis) whose life is being supplanted by a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing ingenue (Anne Baxter) whom she helped. This is a film for a viewer to take in like a box of chocolates, packed with scene-for-scene delights that make the entire story even better than it really is. The film also gives deviously talented actors such as George Sanders and Thelma Ritter a chance to speak dazzling lines; Davis bites into her role ...
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Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
:Description:These glamorous showgirls have everything a girl could want - except engagement rings! In a quest for true love, Lorelei (Marilyn Monroe) and her gold digger pal Dorothy (Jane Russell) set sail on a luxury-liner bound for France. But the pair hits rocky waters when a manipulative detective, an over-aged, over sexed millionaire (Charles Coburn) and the entire men's Olympic team try to put an anchor in their marriage-minded mischief. It's a wild and joyously funny ride across the Atlantic as our bathing beauties plan and plot a way to land their men. ...
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River of No Return
: :Robert Mitchum and Marilyn Monroe are abandoned by a bad guy (Rory Calhoun) who steals Mitchum's horse, forcing them to travel down a raging river (along with Mitchum's son) on a raft. The three refugees, all of them living troubled lives to begin with, have to face the rapids together, and director Otto Preminger's allegory for individual salvation through unity becomes a stirring family drama. This 1954 film features Monroe at her golden peak, though not quite at the apex of her sexual iconography. The result is that she gets to play a ...
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Some Like It Hot
: essential video:Maybe 'nobody's perfect,' as one character in this masterpiece suggests. But some movies are perfect, and Some Like It Hot is one of them. In Chicago, during the Prohibition era, two skirt-chasing musicians, Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon), inadvertently witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. In order to escape the wrath of gangland chief Spats Colombo (George Raft), the boys, in drag, join an all-woman band headed for Florida. They vie for the attention of the lead singer, Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), a much-disappointed songbird who warbles 'I'm ...
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How to Marry a Millionaire
:Description:They're three beautiful models, looking for the man and the money of their dreams! Almost broke, they pool their funds to rent a posh Manhattan penthouse in which they plan to lure their victims. But the gold digger's plans suddenly go awry when two of them fall for men who appear to be poor! Trying to stop each other from marrying the wrong guy, Monroe, Grable, Bacall deliver the finest comedic performances of their careers. And they learn that a rich man is actually worthless- unless you're in love with him! :Nunnally Johnson's ...
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Clash By Night
: essential video:Barbara Stanwyck plays a hardened woman returning from big-city life to her northern fishing village in this 1952 film noir. After deciding to settle down, she marries a simple man (Paul Douglas) but is wooed by another (Robert Ryan), a circumstance that turns what had been her choice into her trap. Director Fritz Lang (Metropolis, M, The Big Heat), working from a Clifford Odets story, teases out his pet themes about human beings ensnared in fate by their own impulses and in search of redemption. This is not one of Lang's ...
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Don't Bother to Knock (1952)
: essential video:Marilyn Monroe's first bona fide starring role came in the taut, stripped-down film noir Don't Bother to Knock. She plays a recently institutionalized, none-too-stable babysitter, awkwardly tending a little girl in a Manhattan hotel. Richard Widmark, jilted by the songbird (Anne Bancroft) in the hotel lounge ('The female race is always cheesing up my life,' he pouts), puts the make on the lonely blonde in room 809, to his regret. The picture benefits by not being a 'Marilyn' movie, but just a good little thriller with, as it happens, a terrific ...
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Bus Stop
:Description:A young and innocent cowboy discovers the girl of his dreams (Marilyn Monroe) and decides to make her his wife. She is more than reluctant to accept his proposal and he forces her to board a bus headed for Montana. The road is blocked and the journey is interrupted by an overnight stay at Grace's Diner, where her plight is soon revealed to all. Realizing his brute approach will never win her heart, he apologizes and kisses her goodbye, only to discover she really has grown to love him. Acclaimed by many as ...
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