If You're New To The Monkey

Katie-Bar-The-Door tells me that some of my family has been steering traffic the Monkey's way via Facebook. I'm not on Facebook myself—trust me, nobody wants to look at my face, and I'm still working on my latest book—but new readers are always welcome.

If you're here to vote in the Favorite Classic Movie Actress Tournament, click here. Otherwise, scroll on down and check out some of what the Monkey has to offer (click the highlighted links).

Movie Reviews

At last count, 78 of my reviews are linked on the Internet Movie Database. Here are three of my favorites: Broken Blossoms, City Lights, and My Man Godfrey.

There are also book reviews and theater reviews. I even reviewed a television show, once.

Biographical Sketches

The eight-part, 12,000 word biography of the Marx Brothers is a bit of an-joke for longtime readers of the Monkey. But there are others almost as long. If brevity is the soul of wit, you'll find very little of it here.

The Silent Oscars and their cousin, The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards

Forget auteur theory, formalism, genre studies or any of that other film school claptrap, the unifying thread running through any well-rounded and not so well-rounded film education is Oscar trivia. And once you start looking at the Oscars, you can't help but argue about what the Academy got right and (more often) got wrong.

I've offered up my picks for every decade of film going back to the beginning and working forward to the present: 1888-1927; 1927-1939; 1940s; 1950s; 1960s; 1970s; 1980s; 1990s; 2000s; 2010s

Aging Actors

For some reason, tracing the lives of popular actors through photographs as they age from youth to old age has proved endlessly fascinating. Judging from the number of hits, the two most popular subjects are Greta Garbo and John Wayne.

Movies That Never Were

Photoshop and leisure time are a bad combination.

Forays Into Lunacy

For example, here and here.

The Monkey On Other Sites

Once in a while I write for ClassicFlix and Sharpologist.com.

Probably other stuff. I don't know, I never read it myself. Enjoy. Or not.