Seraphic Secret

Robert J. Avrech: Emmy Award winning screenwriter. Movie fanatic. Helplessly and hopelessly in love with my wife since age nine.

Touch of Evil

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“I walked on the “Philadelphia Story” (’40) set just as they were shooting the last love scene between Katie Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart. I must say they were both in the mood–especially Jimmy, who had suggestions for improvement until they’d taken five takes. After each he sheepishly exclaimed, “And I’m getting paid for this!” I congratulated him on the improvement of his love technique and asked him to light my cigarette. His hand shook so much he could hardly manage it.”
—Hedda Hopper (1940)

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“Say anything you like, but don’t say I love to work. That sounds like Mary Pickford, the prissy b***h. Just say I like to pinch babies and twist their legs. And get drunk.” -Mabel Normand (1892 - 1930)
“Say anything you like, but don’t say I love to work. That sounds like Mary Pickford, the prissy b***h. Just say I like to pinch babies and twist their legs. And get drunk.”
—Mabel Normand (1892 – 1930)

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“I’d like people to remember me for a diligent expert workman. I think a poet is a workman. I think Shakespeare was a workman. And God’s a workman. I don’t think there’s anything better than a workman.” —Laurence Olivier
“I’d like people to remember me for a diligent expert workman. I think a poet is a workman. I think Shakespeare was a workman. And God’s a workman. I don’t think there’s anything better than a workman.”
—Laurence Olivier

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Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1950s: Touch of Evil

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Orson Welles in Touch of Evil, 1958.
Orson Welles in Touch of Evil, 1958.

We continue our survey of the twenty greatest movies of the 1950s.

For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1940s, click here.

For a listing of the greatest movies of the 20s and 30s click here.

17. Touch of Evil, 1958

In one of the most effective opening sequences ever filmed, the camera focuses in close-up on a bomb being primed and placed in the trunk of a car. The camera pulls back, cranes up, and follows the car down the seedy strip of a Mexican-American bordertown. Soon, the camera powers down to eye level and picks up a strolling couple, newlyweds Mike and Susan Vargas (Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh). He’s a Mexican drug enforcement official.

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