Gary Dennis’ New York City Movie Place

“The only interesting thing this guy did was die in a plane crash” was supposedly said by a producer assigned to do the bio pic of the bandleader Glenn Miller. As most of us know, Mr. Miller got on a small plane in England in 1944 and flew off to Paris in an intense […]

On the eve of the D-Day invasion, an Army Major who knows where the action will take place is kidnapped in Lisbon. Drugged and smuggled out of Portugal to an “Army Hospital” our hero is aged, awakened and led to believe that he had been in a coma and World War Two has […]

Both Humphrey Bogart and William Holden are too old for their roles. Mr. Bogart hated working with director Billy Wilder. No matter what, Humphrey Bogart quit work at 6:00 PM on the dot, because that was the time he started drinking his Scotch and sodas. If anyone tried to get him to work after […]

If there was ever a more “old Upper Westside” picture ever made, it would be news to me. The play and the movie are set on the upper westside. The characters live on the Upper Westside (131 Riverside Drive on 85th street I am so sure). The film makers chose to shoot […]

This was the fourth and final film pairing Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall and it is great. Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart) travels to a run-down hotel on Key Largo to visit the family of a friend who died bravely in his unit during WW II. His friend’s widow, Nora (Lauren Bacall) and wheelchair bound father, […]

Paper Moon
Ah, the ’30s, simplier times. The depression was dragging on but the air waves were full of tunes like “Keep Your Sunny Side Up” or “Happy Days Are Here Again”. The contrast of the music to what is happening in this picture is stark. Desperation, poverty and bitterness, […]

Architect Larry Coe (Kirk Douglas) is missing something in life. He has a wife and family and a successful practice. It’s not until he becomes embroiled in an affair with beautiful Maggie Gault (Kim Novak), a neighbor with her own family, that he finds what he has been missing. She is in a […]

An underated western with subtle comic overtones and elements of suspense. This picture has a great script by Waldo Salt, One of the “Hollywood Ten”. David Harvey (William Holden) is a widower with a young son, Davey. They live on an isolated Ohio farm. He wants his son to be raised in the […]

What Cecil B. DeMille did for the Bible, Cleopatra and the North West Mounted police he also did for the circus. The Greatest Show On Earth is the story of circus people, their hardships and their meshugas, and the inner workings of a circus. The circus in question is the actual Ringling […]

In Caine Mutiny Mr. Bogart plays the quintessential Navy Captain who is losing his marbles. In one of the most tragic and sympathetic performances of a man breaking down sanity-wise on a witness stand, Mr. Bogart moved the studio crew to a thunderous round of applause when the scene was finished. The film […]