Leonard Maltin

Contact Leonard at moviecrazymail@pacbell.net

Limelight, James Bond, And More

By Leonard Maltin
|
October 15, 2012 1:00 AM
|
2 Comments

Blogs

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has offered L.A. movie lovers an abundance of riches over the past few weeks, with more events than I was able to attend—or write about, until now. Celebrating Charlie Chaplin’s Limelight on its 60th anniversary with his leading lady, Claire Bloom, and costar Norman Lloyd was very special indeed. Bloom remarked that she worshipped Chaplin from the moment she met him and still feels that way today. Lloyd, still a formidable raconteur at the age of 97, told about meeting Charlie through their mutual love of tennis, and how he watched the great man write his screenplay in longhand over several years’ time on his sun porch.

By Leonard Maltin
|
January 25, 2012 2:51 PM
|
22 Comments

Features

While it’s fitting that Paramount Pictures should unveil its masterful restoration of Wings on the studio’s 100th birthday, it’s a shame we had to wait this long. It is, in fact, the last Academy Award-winning Best Picture to be released on DVD and Blu-ray—an unintended irony, since it was the first film to receive that honor. (Fox’s Cavalcade was the other longtime holdout, and even now it can only be obtained as part of a big, expensive Fox tribute package.)

By Leonard Maltin
|
November 14, 2011 10:55 AM
|
6 Comments

A soldier turned his camera on Betty Hutton during a USO show in 1944. AMPAS

Film archivists and documentary filmmakers have come to value home movies as a valuable document of 20^th century American life. But when those 8mm or 16mm films were taken by (and of) famous figures in Hollywood history it piques the curiosity of movie nuts like me. At last year’s TCM Classic Film Festival, Joan Crawford’s grandson introduced some of his famous grandmother’s personal footage. A documentary on Humphrey Bogart drew on the movies he actually shot of his children growing up. And Basil Rathbone’s footage on the set of The Adventures of Robin Hood has been a fan favorite on several home-video releases of the classic swashbuckler.

Not long ago, on National Home Movie Day, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences held an open house for the screening of “regular” folks’ home movies during the day and a sold-out showing of vintage Hollywood films at night.

By Leonard Maltin
|
September 26, 2011 4:36 AM
|
5 Comments

The unveiling last week of a nearly nearly ninety-year-old British film on which Alfred Hitchcock served as assistant director, art director, and co-scenarist was another exciting event in the recent parade of major archival discoveries. On Thursday night, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences held the premiere screening of The White Shadow (1924)—or at least, the first half of the feature, which is all that survives. This is just the latest archeological “find” to emerge from a partnership of the New Zealand Film Archive, the American archival community, and the National Film Preservation Foundation that, most notably, unearthed—

By Leonard Maltin
|
July 28, 2011 5:00 AM
|
1 Comment

When I started doing research about film history, I counted myself lucky to live just outside Manhattan so I could visit the incomparable Billy Rose Theatre Collection at the Lincoln Center branch of the New York Public Library. I practically lived there when I was a teenager. On my first visit to California I discovered the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, another world-class resource. I felt bad for people who wanted to write about film but didn’t have access to these unique institutions.

A production sketch for Gone With The Wind drawn by the legendary Art director William Cameron Menzies. (Courtesy of AMPAS)

Now, like the Library of Congress and David Pierce’s Media History Digital Library (see article HERE), the Academy is beginning to scan some of its materials in order to make them available to scholars and film buffs online. Its first major endeavor is its—

By Leonard Maltin
|
March 17, 2010 4:00 AM
|
3 Comments

Like anyone who’s spent much of his life in libraries and archives, hearing a young person claim that you can find “everything you need” to do research online is upsetting, to put it mildly. One can easily find simple information, and misinformation, but if you’ve devoted hours and days digging through vintage film publications or studio production files you know that acres of primary research materials don’t exist on the Internet.

Even if you’re lucky enough to have access to great collections like the ones held by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills, or the New York Public Library in Manhattan, you’re limited to how many hours or days you can spend taking notes and making photocopies.

One dedicated film scholar and archivist is trying to change all that. David Pierce has initiated a privately-funded project called Media History Digital Library, which is described—

By Leonard Maltin
|
November 30, 2009 2:06 AM
|
0 Comments

Like many other movie lovers and purists, I was upset when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that it would be removing all honorary awards from its Oscar broadcast in 2010. This was often the highlight of the show for me, though I realize that it must have been boring for viewers who don’t care about movie history. The Academy promised it would stage an elegant event in November that would bestow even more honorary awards than usual in a given year.

By Leonard Maltin
|
December 1, 2008 7:37 AM
|
0 Comments

Earlier this week, I was honored to be asked to host a screening of 'Hondo' (1953) at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Hondo is one of the few major films of its time that couldn’t be shown at the World 3-D Film Festival in recent years, so hardly anyone has seen it projected in 3-D since its original release.

Email Updates

Get the latest headlines from Leonard Maltin delivered to your inbox every day.

Categories

Limelight, James Bond, And More

‘Wings’ Takes Flight—On DVD

Hollywood Home Movies: The Final Frontier

Uncovering An Early Hitchcock

Academy's Artwork Archive Goes Online

A Gold Mine For Film Research

Oscar, Take A Bow

Hondo In 3-D at the Academy

Around The Network

the network

indiewire

categories

Popular Posts