The pieces on John Ford and Cecil B. Demille were a filmaking 101 class in themselves. I'm fascinated with the study of Hollywood's history, and TCM really offered a great insight into the "Genesis" of Hollywood with their Directors Series. Filmmaking was a relatively new concept when directors like Demille, Ford and Wilder decided to take Broadway West and put it into a new fad that was emerging called "Moving Pictures." And then they all had to adapt again when the moving pictures obtained sound, and I found it especially interesting that directors like Ford and DeMille were apprehensive about the talkies despite their later immense sucess with them. But yeah, the Demille and Ford pieces were especially interesting b/c their careers overlapped such as they did famously at a McCarthy style hearing in the 40's. And the DeMille piece showed old photos of Hollywood when it looked like a trailor park.

And yes, it's been a great *Summer Under the Stars* (Henry Fonda, Judy Garland, last night Bette Davis) and it's just beginning. Earlier today, from 1947, was Cary Grant and Merna Loy with a teenage Shirley Temple in "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer".

Years earlier Shirley Temple was bigger than Cary Grant and Merna Loy combined, but this film really represtented her struggle to find more adult roles - Something she of course never really overcame. This may be an undeniably 'B' movie, but it's a historical artifact on many levels if it has a teenage Shirley Temple.

And what about this very infamous picture of her produced in 1939. It's Temple's head superimposed on the body of some sort of devil goddess with a bat perched on her head and surrounded by the bones of her 'victims'. The bottom reads: "Shirley!. at last in Technicolor". It's said to be a satire on the sexualization of child stars, but really a satire on the sexualization of modern theatre/cinema and storytelling in general, IMO.



(Shirley Temple Black is still alive, btw. She turned 81 in April.)