One of the biggest joys in my life was discovering old movies. As much as I love contemporary film, no matter how gritty, dark, or beautiful and sad they are, sometimes I just long for the big-screen escapism of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Recently, I’ve been dismayed by several polls conducted on the Internet Movie Database website. In each of these polls the majority of readers voted that they were unfamiliar with the films and/or filmmakers listed. This included legends like David Lean, Akira Kurosawa and Humphrey Bogart and films like Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, Seven Samurai, Ran, The Maltese Falcon and Treasure of the Sierra Madre. It’s upsetting that so many people won’t bother with a film that’s more than 10 or 15 years old. I’m sure there are those who haven’t seen anything made before Star Wars.

This will not stand. Here’s a list of my Top Hollywood Classics. They are American films from the 1930s to the 60s that I would recommend wholeheartedly, especially to anyone who is just starting to discover the magic of classic cinema.

Rick Sayre

PAGE 1

Obviously These Are the Tops:

Citizen Kane (1941)

 -Orson Welles’ masterpiece was visually stunning, featured outstanding performances by members of his Mercury Theatre and experimented with non-chronological storytelling. An audacious and misunderstood work at the time, it is now considered by many to be the best American film ever.

Casablanca (1942)

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

Psycho (1960)

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

 1939 was an amazing year for American cinema. Here are my TOP 5 reasons why:

-Bette Davis stars as a Long Island socialite facing down a life-threatening illness and gives one of her most powerful and sympathetic performances. Look for a young Ronald Reagan as her drinking buddy.

Gone with the Wind and…

-Two of the all-time top American classics. Both directed by Victor Fleming. Now that’s an accomplishment.

-Director Frank Capra was the master when it came to making films with heart. This time it’s about an idealistic young politician, played by James Stewart.

-Norma Shearer’s husband is having an affair with Joan Crawford, Shearer’s biggest off-screen rival. Rosalind Russell and company are around to egg them on.

Top Movies About Actors:

–Carole Lombard plays a theatre actress who becomes a star, thanks to director/lover John Barrymore. Then they break up. Then he wants her back for a play. Luckily, they are stuck on a train together from Chicago to New York. Poor Carole.

–Bette Davis in her best movie ever. She is a theatre star who meets Eve, an innocent little fan. An innocent little fan who schemes her way onto Bette’s stage! You already know at least one classic line from this, so “fasten your seatbelts, it’s gonna be a bumpy night!”

–Gloria Swanson is an ex-silent movie star playing a really creepy ex-silent movie star who meets (then keeps) a young screenwriter who she decides is going to help her return to stardom by helping her write a screen version of “Salome” and living with her. He’s conflicted about being a kept man and living in her creepy old house. Prepare for your close-up.

TOP Mysteries and Thrillers:

–Universal Studios got the monster movies right. Bela Lugosi as Dracula and Boris Karloff as Frankenstein are both excellent- as is the 1934 sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein.

–In Alfred Hitchcock’s first American film, Joan Fontaine is a lonely secretary who meets a dashing millionaire, Laurence Olivier. They get married, but when he takes her home to his mansion, Manderlay, everyone compares her to his former wife, Rebecca. Who died. And who the creepy housekeeper Mrs. Danvers is still obsessed with.

–San Francisco detective (Humphrey Bogart) gets hired by a shady lady and finds himself in way over his head. It’s tough to be a private dick.

–Barbara Stanwyck is a femme fatale who talks an insurance man into doing something he really, really shouldn’t do.

Two rich (and clearly gay) college boys decide to experiment with MURDER! Then they think it’ll be awesome to throw a dinner party for the deceased with his family & friends, including James Stewart. While his body’s under the buffet! This darkly funny thriller is my favorite Alfred Hitchcock movie.

–post WWII intrigue in Vienna with Orson Welles and the best theme song ever.

–Underrated movie about a pickpocket who gets caught up in espionage involving some shady characters in the NYC underworld.

–Hitchcock & James Stewart re-team. This time James is a photographer with a broken leg and nothing to do. Except watch his neighbors through the telescopic lens! And then decide that he’s pretty sure one of the neighbors has killed his wife. Gorgeous Grace Kelly steals the show.

–Robert Mitchum is a very, very scary psycho preacher who knows that a couple of children saw him doing something very bad and hunts them down. Traumatic!

–Hitchcock & Stewart again! James spies on a friend’s suicidal wife. Then becomes obsessed with another woman and tries to change her into the suicidal wife’s image. Really creepy, considered by many to be the best Hitchcock film.

–Cary Grant is mistaken for Roger Thornhill. Sadly the people trying to capture and kill Roger Thornhill don’t have much of an eye for detail. This is a really fun, charming Hitchcock movie.

–Bette Davis is a crazy former child star (redundant?) who HATES her sister Joan Crawford, who was a big time movie star until she became a cripple in a wheelchair… who has to live with her crazy former child star sister. Lunch time is scary, but probably not as scary as life behind the scenes with Crawford & Davis.

–Audrey Hepburn plays a woman who finds out that the husband she recently lost had a whole other mysterious life. It’s suspenseful, it’s set in Paris and it has Cary Grant.

Comedies:

–Norma Shearer is on her honeymoon when she discovers that the man celebrating his honeymoon in the room next door is her ex-husband, Robert Montgomery. Sparks fly and they ditch their new spouses only to find themselves fighting again in a Swiss chalet. Based on a Noël Coward play, this is a witty slice of brilliance. Which you probably won’t be able to find.

–My favorite movie EVER. Carole Lombard, Hollywood’s Queen of Comedy, grabs Godfrey from the dump to present a “forgotten” (ok homeless) man at a scavenger hunt for socialites. Then she decides to hire him as the family butler. Then she falls in love with him.

-Journalist Frederic March takes Carole Lombard to New York City because it’s her dying wish. Only she hasn’t told him that she’s not really dying…

–Katharine Hepburn meets Cary Grant, says “I want me a piece of that!” and pretty much stalks him. Until he ends up following her and her leopard (Yes, I said leopard) around Connecticut, where he loses a very important dinosaur bone. It’s called Screwball comedy, kids, and there’s nothing better!

-Rich guy James Stewart falls for Jean Arthur, who’s got an eccentric family led by the legendary Lionel Barrymore. It’s romantic and comedic and directed by Frank Capra!

–Katharine is getting married, but her ex-Cary Grant isn’t too happy about it because he loves her still. Oh, and so does James Stewart, who has been sent to cover her wedding with a photographer who is in love with him. I think that makes it a love… pentagram?

–Barbara Stanwyck is a con lady who meets Henry Fonda on an ocean liner and decides he’s an easy target. Then she falls for the guy. Then he finds out why she was into him to begin with.

–Alfred Hitchcock does screwball comedy! Carole Lombard & Robert Montgomery find out that their marriage was never actually made official. He jokes that maybe he’ll think about his options before re-marrying her. She calls his bluff and dates his friend. Take that!

–Cary Grant’s wedding night is delayed when he finds out that his eccentric old aunts have been poisoning homeless strangers and burying them in the basement, where a cousin who believes he’s Theodore Roosevelt has been digging the Panama Canal. Oh, also a bad guy who looks like Boris Karloff in Frankenstein is spending the night.

–Barbara Stanwyck writes a Martha Stewart-esque column for a magazine, despite the fact that she lives alone in an apartment in Brooklyn and can’t even cook. A handsome WWII hero wins a chance to spend Christmas with her at her beautiful home in Connecticut. With her husband. And baby. She has to lie. A lot.

–Audrey Hepburn makes her screen debut as a princess who is sick of being locked up and wants to experience life the way real people do. So she hides in an apple truck and gets lost in Rome. Then gets found by the incredibly handsome Gregory Peck. Which I’m pretty sure is nothing like real life.

–Jack Lemmon & Tony Curtis witness a mob killing then dress up like ladies in an all-girl orchestra (Marilyn Monroe plays the sax) to escape the mobsters sent to silence them. Jack Lemmon is a comedy god and the sooner you realize that, the better off you will be.

–Jack Lemmon has a sweet apartment across from Central Park. He rents it out to his superiors at work so they can meet their mistresses in private. One such mistress is Shirley MacLaine, who Jack has fallen for. But the funniest part might be that his rent was like 100 bucks a month…

–Audrey Hepburn’s iconic performance as Holly Golightly has inspired thousands of girls to wear dark shades in front of jewelry stores. I don’t know what Mickey Rooney’s performance as a Japanese stereotype has influenced.

Dramas:

–Norma Shearer falls in love and gets married, all in the first five minutes. When she discovers that her husband’s cheated on her, she gets even- “I’ve balanced our accounts” ought to be a classic bit of dialogue, but this racy film was swept under the carpet when Hollywood began censoring themselves. Available on the Forbidden Hollywood Volume 2 dvd, along with another Shearer classic, A Free Soul.

–A movie with five of the biggest stars of the 1930s tells the story of 2 days in Berlin’s Grand Hotel. Greta Garbo is a depressed ballerina who wants to be alone, Joan Crawford is a saucy stenographer, Drew Barrymore’s grandfather, John, is a dashing baron, while her great-uncle Lionel (the best Barrymore ever) is a dying clerk. Grand Hotel has a little bit of everything and all of it’s good.

-Frank Capra directed this heartwarming tale about a small town writer who inherits a fortune & moves to the big city. Never mention the remake with Adam Sandler.

–Joan Crawford works her way up and single-handedly supports her daughter. Unfortunately, her daughter is kind of an ungrateful whore and someone’s gonna die. Joan won her only Oscar for this great Michael Curtiz picture.

–Kirk Douglas is a journalist who was such a bad drunk that he’s been banned to a small town in the Southwest. When a mine collapses, he’s determined to make the drama last until he’s back on top of the newspaper circuit. NO MATTER WHAT!! Directed by Billy Wilder a year after his great Sunset Boulevard, Ace in the Hole feels like it’s a story that could take place today.

–Audrey Hepburn meets Albert Finney, falls in love, gets married, then it all goes to hell. Only not in that order, as director Stanley Donen experiments with storytelling style.