Emily Osment

Emily Osment

Emily Osment

Emily Osment

Emily Osment

Emily Osment

Emily Osment

Emily Osment

Emily Osment

Emily Osment

Miley Cyrus

Miley Cyrus

Miley Cyrus

Miley Cyrus

Miley Cyrus

Miley Cyrus

Miley Cyrus

Miley Cyrus

Miley Cyrus

Miley Cyrus

Kirsten Dunst

Kirsten Dunst

Kirsten Dunst

Kirsten Dunst

Kirsten Dunst

Kirsten Dunst

Kirsten Dunst

Kirsten Dunst

Kirsten Dunst

Kirsten Dunst

Dick Powell in "Christmas in July" (1940) by Preston Sturges

Ellen Drew as Betty Casey and Dick Powell as Jimmy MacDonald in "Christmas in July" (1940), directed by Preston Sturges.


A scene from "Christmas in July" (1940) directed by Preston Sturges, starring Dick Powell and Ellen Drew. Jimmy MacDonald believes he has won the Maxford House Coffee Slogan Contest and brings his fiancée Betty to Shindel to buy her an engagement ring.

"Preston Sturges's second feature as writer-director (1940) is in many ways the most underrated of his movies —a riotous comedy-satire about capitalism that bites so deep it hurts. An ambitious but impoverished office clerk (Dick Powell) is determined to strike it rich in a contest with a stupid slogan (“If you can't sleep at night, it isn't the coffee, it's the bunk”). He's tricked by a few of his coworkers into believing that he's actually won, promptly gets promoted, and proceeds to go on a shopping spree for his neighbors and relatives.

Like much of Sturges's finest work, this captures the mood of the Depression more completely than most 30's pictures, and the brilliantly polyphonic script repeats the hero's dim-witted slogan so many times that it eventually becomes a kind of crazed tribal incantation. As usual, Sturges's supporting cast (including Ellen Drew, William Demarest, and Raymond Walburn) is luminous, and he uses it like instruments in a madcap concerto". Source: www.jonathanrosenbaum.com


Neighbourhood scene from "Christmas in July" (1940) directed by Preston Sturges, starring Dick Powell and Ellen Drew.

"Exhaustion has begun to creep on Powell’s perennial go-getter, and his manager’s (Harry Hayden) little monologue on embracing mediocrity is starting to sound reasonable. Co-workers prank him with a phony telegram: Maxford House Coffee has just picked his slogan and awarded him $25,000. The hoax snowballs - Powell’s dissonant jingle ("If you can’t sleep at night, it isn’t the coffee, it’s the bunk") suddenly becomes gold-plated, and, elated with this "commercial insurance," the company president (Ernest Truex) promptly kicks the clerk upstairs to the adverting department.

Prize money fills the streets with gifts, capitalism giveth and capitalism taketh away. "I’m not a failure, I’m a success," people tell themselves, and Sturges is there with his severe long takes, peeling back the comedy. A very barbed account of the American Dream as something between a shopping-spree bacchanalia and an uprising of tossed fruit, seemingly as cozy as The Gift of the Magi yet in reality more stinging than Revolutionary Road. King Vidor’s dehumanizing office passes by on its way to The Apartment, a black cat crosses the squashed dreamer’s path. Is it good or bad luck? "Well, that all depends on what happens afterwards." William Demarest delivers the punchline miracle. "Unhappy the land that needs miracles". Source: www.cinepassion.org


"Сhrіѕtmаs іn Julу" (Preston Ѕturgеѕ, 1940) - Full Movie.

(Christmas comes only once a year), Vincent Sherman on John Garfield.

John Garfield and Lana Turner as Frank and Cora in "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946) directed by Tay Garnett

Frank: Maybe it's none of my business, but, uh, what's Nick sore about?

Cora: He's so crazy about the sign, he's afraid you'll claim it's your idea instead of his.

Frank: Yeah. (He winks at her) Watch.

Jake Gyllenhaal winking right eye

John Garfield winking right eye

Anne Shirley and John Garfield in "Saturday's Children" (1940) directed by Vincent Sherman

"I was able to capitalize on qualities I knew he had, naïvete, sweetness, charm, vulnerability. It was a big artistic success. He was a trained actor with many sides to his talent". -Vincent Sherman on John Garfield

Kaaren Verne and Humphrey Bogart in "All Through The Night" (1942) directed by Vincent Sherman

Vincent Sherman was well-known in Hollywood for "women's pictures" and went on to direct such fine films as "All through the night" starring Humphrey Bogart and "The Hard Way" (both in 1942). Like Patri and Odets before him, Sherman ended up playing surrogate father to John Garfield. Acting fired interest in cultural and national events. "He was so eager to find out everything there is to know about life", Sherman recalled. "He wanted to know about art, painting and music. I've never seen such eagerness to learn in all my life. I'd buy a New Republic and The Nation and let him read them, and he'd just devour them".

Sherman and Garfield would stay up through the wee hours of the night talking about theater and life. "We lived in New York at that time," Sherman recalled. Garfield wanted more "Four Daughters" type films rather than another "Blackwell's Island", and to that end he made it a habit to hang out with the studio's screenwriters at their lunch table in the commissary.

Garfield continued to socialize with the Epstein Brothers and Ring Lardner Jr., as well as Howard Koch, John Huston and others, figuring he'd have a chance to get in on the ground floor of the next good picture. He accepted the fact that these writers would make him the brunt of their jokes. "What do you hear from the fates, John?" they would yell to him across the commissary, which led everyone to laugh.

"His desire was to be with the writers, and I understood that and appreciated that. I didn't think it was anything to laugh about, but sometimes the writers would make fun of him and laugh about it", Sherman recalled. Garfield needed to be liked; he still had that insecurity that stemmed from his lack of family. "Everybody he spoke to, he used charm with", secretary Helen Levitt recalled. "He needed everyone to like him. He really worked at it." Elia Kazan agreed: "He wanted to be liked, to be valued, to be esteemed."

Priscilla Lane and John Garfield in "Four Daughters" (1939) directed by Michael Curtiz

"I wanna have it all through the night
Christmas comes only once a year
why can't anybody shed just one tear
for things that don't happen all through the night
Oh, mama, all through the night
oh, baby, do it to me all through the night
Easy, easy, baby, why don't you give it to me
all through the night" -"All Through The Night" song by Lou Reed ("The Bells" album, 1979)

At age 24, Garfield was a success. He was a movie star, the embodiment of the American Dream. He truly believed that he would be given the type of roles that made the careers of great actors like Olivier. But Garfield was in for a shock. There would be few films of the quality of "Four Daughters" at Warner Bros. "He became like a star overnight. He wasn't prepared to that kind of success so quickly, almost meteoric" -recalled Vincent Sherman.

George Brent and Bette Davis in "Dark Victory" (1939) directed by Vincent Sherman

John Garfield and Bette Davis, co-founders of The Hollywood Canteen

In "Saturday's Children" Garfield won an on-going battle with Warner Bros. to let him play something other than a thug or a criminal; unfortunately the film was a box-office flop, although critics praised Garfield's performance. Garfield plays Rims Rosson, a shy, naive young inventor who has dreams of adventure but who in reality is just another office clerk who's always strapped for money.

Christmas Eve at home with Joan Crawford and her children & stills of "Humoresque"

Stills of Joan Crawford and John Garfield in "Humoresque" (1946) directed by Jean Negulesco


1949 radio show "Christmas Eve at home with Joan Crawford and her children"