DOCUMENTARY: JUDY GARLAND - BEFORE THE RAINBOW

 

RECENTLY VIEWED: SCARY MOVIE 6

Okay, I know what you think - Scary Movie 6 is hardly a classic movie, and it is not. However, the original two movies that came out in 2000 and 2001 represented a different time in my life. Back then I was single, and it seemed like the world still could laugh then. So when this new comedy came out, I had to see it. Scary Movie (colloquially known as Scary Movie 6) is a 2026 American parody film directed by Michael Tiddes and written by Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Craig Wayans, and Rick Alvarez. It is the sixth installment in the Scary Movie film series, following Scary Movie 5 (2013), and has been referred to as the spiritual sequel to the first two films. It stars Marlon, Shawn, Anna Faris, and Regina Hall. The plot follows Cindy Campbell and her friends Ray Wilkins and siblings Shorty and Brenda Meeks reunited when the same masked killer from the first film resurfaces.

A sixth Scary Movie film was announced in 2024 and later that same year, it was revealed to have the involvement of the Wayans family for the first time since their departure from the franchise following the release of Scary Movie 2 (2001) due to creative conflicts with the original producers. Scary Movie was released in the United States by Paramount Pictures on June 5, 2026. Like the previous films, it received negative reviews from critics, but grossed $106 million against a $30 million budget.

The movie parodies almost every horror movie and some popular movies that have come out. The cast is excellent and Annna Faris, Regina Hall, and The Wayans Brothers have not missed a beat. Two welcomed returns that I think made the movie is the return of Cheri Oteri and Chris Elliott. I wish thet were in the film more.

Now the comedy is great, and I actually laughed a lot at the gross out humor. It's been awhile since a film came out like this. However, the story is not there, but who needs a plot in a Scary Movie film! For some of the humor and inside jokes, you have to be a Scary Movie fan. I am so it was just a fun movie to see. Nothing more and nothing less...

MY RATING: 7 out of 10

CELEBRITY DEATH CERTIFICATES: VINCENT PRICE

Here is the death cerificate for legendary actor Vincent Price who died at the age of 82 on October 25, 1993...

A NIGHT AT THE OPERA: A PERFECT MARX BROTHERS MOVIE

"A Night at the Opera" (1935) came about, in fact, because "Duck Soup" had failed so badly at the box office in 1933. The Marx Brothers’ earlier films had been successful, but this one, regarded today as a classic, had laid a giant egg in its own time. (According to small-town theater owners, grassroots America much preferred the homespun comedy of Joe E. Brown to the Marx Brothers in any case.)

It was Irving Thalberg, the brilliant production head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and erstwhile “boy genius” of Hollywood, who came to the Marx Brothers’ rescue. He became acquainted with Chico Marx on the high-stakes bridge circuit in Beverly Hills, and this led to a discussion about the brothers moving to M-G-M. “I can make a film with you that would have half as many laughs as your Paramount films, but they will be more effective because the audience will be in sympathy with you,” he told Groucho.

As Groucho told Richard Anobile some forty years later, “He was right. If you recall the opening of 'Night at the Opera' where Harpo is trying on the costume of the lead singer, the singer comes into his dressing room and discovers Harpo, and begins beating him. This immediately established sympathy for Harpo, and puts the audience on his side. The plot of the film revolves around our helping two lovers, Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones, get together. The audience was in our corner. This is exactly what Thalberg wanted.”

The trick was to integrate Groucho, Harpo, and Chico into such a story without diluting their own anti-establishment brand of humor—no mean feat, considering the insipid nature of most romantic subplots in films of this sort. But Thalberg wasn’t about to destroy the appeal of the Marx Brothers. In fact, he spared no expense or effort to make this film a success. He hired playwright George S. Kaufman and his partner Morrie Ryskind to work on the script. They were no strangers to Marx territory, having written both "Cocoanuts" (made into a 1929 film) and "Animal Crackers" (made into a film), but they were firmly established in New York (where they’d recently won a Pulitzer Prize for their play "Of Thee I Sing") and had no particular desire to move West. Thalberg lured Kaufman to Hollywood with a salary of $10,000 a week! In true M-G-M/Thalberg fashion, other hired hands were brought on board to improve and “doctor” the script. In all, the film boasted eight writers, though only three received credit.
Thalberg made the unprecedented decision to test the finished material “on the road,” in a specially-prepared stage version of the screenplay. Every performance was a test: what worked, remained. What didn’t, was changed.

With the comedy honed to perfection, Thalberg made sure the other elements of the film were their equal. A recent M-G-M arrival named Allan Jones was hired for the juvenile lead, and a newcomer from Broadway named Kitty Carlisle was borrowed from Paramount, where she had appeared in two films with Bing Crosby. Their unaffected performances and attractive singing voices contribute a great deal to the “tolerability” of the straight material in "A Night at the Opera". (And the songs aren’t bad, either. “Alone,” by M-G-M’s house songwriters Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed, became a hit.)
The Marx Brothers are further aided and abetted by a hand-picked supporting cast, including the indispensable Margaret Dumont, the imperious Siegfried Rumann, the insufferable Walter King, and the incompetent Robert Emmett O’Connor. Perfect foils, all.

Last, but not least, it should be said that "A Night at the Opera" presents the Marx Brothers at the peak of their powers. Groucho and Chico never had a funnier encounter than the “party of the first part” contract negotiation. Chico never had a better double-talk showcase than his description of the aviators’ trouble-ridden trip to America. And the threesome never participated in a funnier single set piece than the stateroom scene.

So it was M-G-M, never noted for its contributions to screen comedy, that produced one of the greatest comedies ever made. Not by chance, or circumstances, but by gathering together a group of outstanding talents and channeling their efforts toward a goal of perfection. Best of all, their work has stood the test of time...

RALPH FIENNES AND 1993

1993 was Ralph Fiennes' "breakout year." He had a major role in Peter Greenaway's film "The Baby of Mâcon" with Julia Ormond, and, later that year, he became known internationally for portraying the brutal Nazi concentration camp commandant Amon Göth in Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List." For this, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Though he did not win the Oscar, but did win the Best Supporting Actor BAFTA Award for the role. His portrayal of Göth also saw him listed at number 15 on the AFI's list of the top 50 film villains.

Fiennes later stated that playing the role had a profoundly disturbing effect on him: "Evil is cumulative. It happens. People believe that they've got to do a job, they've got to take on an ideology, that they've got a life to lead; they've got to survive, a job to do, it's every day inch by inch, little compromises, little ways of telling yourself this is how you should lead your life and suddenly then these things can happen. I mean, I could make a judgment myself privately, this is a terrible, evil, horrific man. But the job was to portray the man, the human being. There’s a sort of banality, that everydayness, that I think was important. And it was in the screenplay. In fact, one of the first scenes with Oskar Schindler, with Liam Neeson, was a scene where I'm saying, 'You don't understand how hard it is, I have to order so many-so many meters of barbed wire and so many fencing posts and I have to get so many people from A to B.' And, you know, he's sort of letting off steam about the difficulties of the job."

Fiennes put on 28 pounds to play the role. He watched historic newsreels and talked to Holocaust survivors who knew Göth. In portraying him, Fiennes said, "I got close to his pain. Inside him is a fractured, miserable human being. I feel split about him, sorry for him. He's like some dirty, battered doll I was given and that I came to feel peculiarly attached to."

Spielberg on Fiennes' audition: "I saw sexual evil. It is all about subtlety: there were moments of kindness that would move across his eyes and then instantly run cold."

When survivor Mila Pfefferberg was introduced to Fiennes on the set, she began shaking uncontrollably, as he reminded her too much of the real Göth...

THE BANNING OF THE OUTLAW

In 1941, while filming "The Outlaw," Howard Hughes felt that the camera did not do justice to Jane Russell's bust. He employed his engineering skills to design a new cantilevered underwire bra to emphasize her figure. Hughes added curved structural steel rods that were sewn into the brassiere under each breast cup and connected to the bra's shoulder straps. This arrangement allowed the breasts to be pulled upwards and made it possible to move the shoulder straps away from the neck. As a result, the design allowed for a larger amount of Russell's bosom to be exposed. Contrary to many media reports afterward, Russell did not wear the bra during filming; according to her 1988 autobiography, she said the bra was so uncomfortable that she secretly discarded it. She wrote that the "ridiculous" contraption hurt so much that she wore it for only a few minutes, and instead wore her own bra. To prevent Hughes from noticing, Russell padded the cups with tissue and tightened the shoulder straps before returning to the set. She later said "I never wore it in 'The Outlaw', and he never knew. He wasn’t going to take my clothes off to check if I had it on. I just told him I did." The famed bra ended up in a Hollywood museum—a false witness to the push-up myth.

Although the film was completed in February 1941, Hughes had trouble getting it approved by the Hollywood Production Code Administration due to its emphasis on and display of Russell's breasts. The Production Administration set the standards for morally acceptable content in motion pictures, and ordered cuts to the film. Hughes reluctantly removed about 40 feet, or a half-minute, of footage that prominently featured Russell's bosom. However, 20th Century Fox decided to cancel its agreement to release "The Outlaw"; as a result, Hughes stood to lose millions of dollars. Ever the resourceful businessman, he schemed to create a public outcry for his film to be banned. Hughes had all his managers call ministers, women's clubs and housewives, informing them about the 'lewd picture' Hughes was about to release. 

The public responded by protesting and trying to have the film banned, which generated the publicity Hughes needed to establish a demand for the film and get it released. The resulting controversy created enough interest to get "The Outlaw" into theaters for just one week in 1943, and then it was pulled due to violations of the Production Code. The film was released widely on April 23, 1946 when RKO Radio Pictures premiered the film in San Francisco, where the theater owner was arrested for showing a film "offensive to decency." The MPAA maintained that Hughes switched prints and did not show the version that was approved. Hughes resigned from the MPAA and filed a $1,000,000 lawsuit demanding triple damages. He lost the suit and all the appeals. Despite the legal battles and many bans, United Artists continued to roadshow the film in 1946 and 1947 and it set records almost everywhere it was shown. Originally banned in New York, it was finally shown on September 11, 1947 when the ban was lifted...

GARRETT MORRIS: THE EARLY YEARS

The first seasons of Saturday Night Live feature big names we all remember. Bill Murray, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Chevy Chase (OK, we remember Chevy but we don’t have to like him). Most of them went on to movie stardom, celebrity rehab, or both. But there’s one name we hear about much less: Garrett Morris.

Which is strange. Garrett Morris was the first Black performer on Saturday Night Live, paving the way for Black actors in televised sketch comedy. Without Garrett Morris, is there an Eddie Murphy? How about Tracy Morgan or Kenan Thompson? Morris laid the groundwork for Key & Peele and the ladies on A Black Lady Sketch Show.

 
One would think he would be a greater presence in the pantheon of beloved SNL performers. One would think we’d celebrate him every Black History Month. Or that he would constantly be welcomed back to the SNL stage alongside all the other legendary living alums of this show. But he is often forgotten or sidelined.

 
The sad truth? Garrett Morris’s time on the historic comedy show isn’t remembered as a precious moment in comedic history. Rather, it is a bitter time capsule filled with disrespect, heavy drug use, and racism.

 
There was a lot of turmoil for Morris to get onto that Studio 8H stage in the first place.
He came to the show a trained theater actor, not an improv Second City guy like Belushi or Aykroyd. While he did have an improvisational background, it looked a lot different than his castmates’ experiences in Chicago and Toronto.

 
“I learned improv with Imamu Amiri Baraka, not at Second City. And the workshops were more about talking about problems in the ghetto — the aim wasn’t necessarily comedy,” Morris confessed to Maya Rudolph in the Hollywood Reporter. “So, when John Belushi and Gilda Radner got into Saturday Night Live, they had a comedy range from one to a hundred. My range was from “Hate Whitey” to “Kill Whitey.”

Though he was light on improv training, Morris arrived at SNL with some serious chops in his toolbelt. Morris began his journey in show business as a playwright; in fact, he exclusively thought of himself as one. “Mind you, I had two plays that had been produced in New York City,” Morris remembers. “In fact, New York commissioned a play from your boy, okay, and then I wrote another play, which was produced in New York and in L.A.”

 
With his theater work proving successful, it was a leap of faith for Morris to even take the TV job. But despite his reservations, he entered the Saturday Night Live fray as a writer. That position seems like a natural fit given his background but trying to transition from plays to sketch proved to be a challenge for Morris. “I’m a playwright, so I was having trouble getting my stuff down to a minute or a minute and a half, to fit into some sketch.”

 
In addition to the writing challenges, Morris was met with America’s pastime: racism. “I was a little disappointed in Michael O’Donoghue,” Morris remembers. “Because he was associated with National Lampoon, I made some progressive assumptions I shouldn’t have made. He was a racist motherfucker. I suggested I could play in this skit, a doctor. He had the nerve to tell me, ‘Garrett, people would be thrown by a Black doctor.’ … So once or twice, he and I did some stuff together, but I always knew what he really was.”

Being the only Black person in the room is never easy. Often, the solo Black person in question will think the racist comment or moment was in their head, or even that they made it up. Fortunately for Morris (or unfortunately, depending on how you see it), he knew his perception of racist behavior wasn’t simply one man’s opinion. Other cast members noticed what was going on.

 
“Garrett was treated horribly, horribly— by the writers, by some of the performers, and Lorne,” notes OG cast member Jane Curtin. “They just dismissed him... I found it amazing that he let it go on for as long as it did, but it took its toll, it clearly took its toll on Garrett.”

 
So the problem wasn’t just making the transition from theater to TV. It was personal. Morris was not liked by his fellow writers. His sketches were not getting put on the air, not being taken seriously, and even worse, they were stolen.

 
“The first three months or so, a guy there stole an idea and then added a little something to it, and he didn’t even give me credit for co-writing,” Morris remembers about one particularly egregious example of joke theft. “This guy stole from me and then told Lorne I couldn’t write.”

There was a silent coup underway, led by white writers, to oust Garrett Morris from the writer’s room. What was head honcho Lorne Michaels’ response? Put Garrett Morris in the cast! You can’t say Lorne didn’t get creative.

 
“When the challenge came to get rid of me as a writer, Lorne let me audition for the Not Ready for Prime Time Players,” Morris remembers. “He did not fire me. And to this day, I am thankful for that.”