The first Fred Astaire-Rita Hayworth musical, “You’ll Never get Rich,” boasts the Oscar-nominated song by Cole Porter, “Since I Kissed My Baby Goodbye,” and his even more popular tune, “So Near and Yet So Far.” Astaire and Hayworth play Bob Curtis and Sheila Winthrop, a team of Broadway dancers whose partnership abruptly ends, when he […]

The second and last Fred Astaire-Rita Hayworth musical, “You Were Never Lovelier” takes place in the studio-shot Argentina. Astaire plays Robert Davis, an American dancer whose penchant for betting on horse races has made him financially broke. Hayworth’s Maria Acuna is the beautiful daughter of wealthy Argentinian nightclub owner Eduardo Acuna (Adolphe Menjou), a rigid […]

Set in the 1960s, this coming of age comedy, written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola as a thesis at UCLA, centers on a young and shy boy (Peter Kastner), a New York librarian, who tries to break away from the clutches of his overprotective and domineering mother (Geraldine Page) The terrific supporting cast includes […]

Made in 1964 by Larry Price, the low-budget indie, One Potato, Two Potato dealt with the provocative and inflammatory topic of racism and miscegenation. A white woman named Julie Cullen (Barbara Barrie) divorces her husband (Richard Mulligan) and then falls in love with and marries an African-American, Frank Richards (Bernie Hamilton). When her husband sues […]

“Zelig,” the 1983 mockumentary from the prolific and versatile Woody Allen, is a small-scale but highly original and droll fable-comedy, with sharp observations about conformity, assimilation, and obsession with fame and celebrities.