New York Times’ film critic Mordaunt Hall was beyond effusive in his review of Ernst Lubitsch’s 1926 comedy souffle SO THIS IS PARIS (’26) describing it as a “gay picture” which “hails from the workshop of that master director Ernst Lubitsch” and is doing its share to “uphold the screen art…’” He added that the “farce comedy is titivated with satire. It is a farcical yarn that keeps one amused from the start. The publication named the romantic roundelay starring Monte Blue, Patsy Ruth Miller, Lilyan Tashman and Andre Beranger, as one of the top ten films of the year.

Though several of Lubitsch’s silent Hollywood films have been released on DVD or aired on TCM, that hasn’t been the case with SO THIS IS PARIS, because the comedy didn’t have a score until now. The virtual TCM Classic Film Festival has the “Lubitsch Touch” Sunday evening with the world premiere of the new restoration of SO THIS IS PARIS, presented in a 2K scan off the Warner Bros. nitrate complete with a lively original organ score by and performed by Ben Model.

Over the years, TCM had licensed Model’s scores for silent films in the public domain he had initially done for home video including Baby Peggy’s THE FAMILY SECRET (‘24) and Marion Davies’ WHEN KNIGHTHOOD WAS IN FLOWER (‘22). One of the top accompanists and composers of silent film scores, Model had long wanted to work with TCM to commission new scores for their scoreless silent films in their library. After discussions with Charles Tabesh, TCM’s SVP for programming and content strategy, Model was able to score SO THIS IS PARIS.

“I knew SO THIS IS PARIS had been shown at the TCM Film Festival a few years prior,” said Model. “I knew this is a film that Warners’ controls. It’s a film I don’t have to convince anybody about… It’s already on everyone’s radar. I also knew that the Library of Congress had material on it.” And, it turned out TCM had scanned its print of the film. “They sent me a file and I scored the film.”

Surprisingly, Model doesn’t compose or play on an actual mighty Wurlitzer, he utilizes a virtual one using a computer program that “behaves like an actual organ console would.” Model watched the film once and took a lot of notes for himself: “story notes where I’m writing down what happens in the scene, what mood I think it would be. Sometimes I’ll write down this should be a minor waltz or something like that. I will also notate for myself in boldface visual cues. Not in a Mickey Mouse coconut sounds when somebody gets hit on the head kind of thing, but just so I can see it at a dramatic moment. “

There’s a scene in the beginning of the film where the one couple is rehearsing this Arabian dance and there is a man playing the piano. “We get a glimpse of the sheet music,” Model noted. “I thought just in case there are any musicians who are reading [the sheet music], I actually transcribed the first eight or nine ears of the ‘Dance of the Despair’ and it kind of works. “

He doesn’t write all the music out when he’s composing. “I improvise, although when I’m recording, it’s more like I improvise until it’s right. It’s a form of composition where I’m not physically writing notes on a piece of paper. But I still think of it as composition and not just making music until the scene is over. Improvisation was a technique that organists knew.”

He learned as a young man from the legendary silent film accompanist Lee Erwin that silent film music “should be interesting enough to hold you, but not pretty enough to distract you. The idea is because silent film is its own universe. I think the idea it to support the film and help the audience. Boost then up into the world and keep them in that world.” The biggest challenge scoring the film is the three minutes and 13 second Charleston party sequence “where nothing happens,” noted Model. “The film is forward motion and dramatic action then the movie stops. It’s just shots of a lot of people dancing. I didn’t just want to play until the scene was over. I wanted to try and map something out.”

So, Model watched the sequence, took down the timing and even created a spreadsheet “so I could figure out not only how many seconds each the segments are. I was able to break it down and discover the internal logical of the editing. I came up with a tempo which is a Charleston tempo or a tempo that the Charleston would be played it.” He chose not to include the famous Charleston music in the sequence because he thought it would be a distraction. “I chose to play music that was at the Charleston tempo so you could concentrate on what was being done on screen.”

“The secret in animating is first to have an everlasting sense of humor, next to be able to see the commonplace in a funny way and most important of all, to be able to sketch your idea so that the other person will think it’s funny.“—Tex Avery, The Dallas Morning News, 1933

At the start of Fred “Tex” Avery’s RED HOT RIDING HOOD (‘43), the Wolf, Red Riding Hood and even Grandma rebel against a traditional rendering of the classic fairy tale and threaten to quit the cartoon right then and there. “Every cartoon studio in Hollywood has done it this way,” Red complains. “I’m pretty sick of it myself,” Grandma chimes in. And just like that, something new had been added, with a cat-calling, zoot-suit-bedecked Wolf cruising Hollywood Blvd.; Red Hot Riding Hood (aka that Sweetheart of Swing) knockin’ ‘em dead at a Hollywood night club; and a slang-slinging Grandma (“Hiya cousin, what’s buzzin?’”) waiting for a wolf of her own in her penthouse digs.

RED HOT RIDING HOOD kicks off TCM’s early morning tribute to Tex Avery, which will easily be the funniest thing you see all day. The cartoons will be preceded by John Needham’s British documentary TEX AVERY: KING OF CARTOONS (‘88). It is an ideal primer into the Avery-verse that charts his legendary career from high school cartoonist through his tenures with Walter Lantz Productions, Warner Bros. and MGM. Along with a generous sampling of clips from his Warner Bros. and MGM cartoons, there are priceless interviews with equally legendary colleagues such as Chuck Jones, Heck Allen and Mike Lah, along with June Foray, the Queen of Cartoons and Joe Adamson, who wrote the essential book, also titled Tex Avery: King of Cartoons. (Coincidence, isn’t it?)

Needham told TCM he was encouraged to make the documentary by Chuck Jones, whom Needham had profiled for the BBC arts series, Omnibus. “He simply said, ‘We should make a film about Tex,” he said. As an Avery fan himself, Needham was all in. “I think it’s his ability to take a gag to the extremes and then take it further and then take it even further,” he said. “Chuck said that he could never copy Tex because he didn’t have a clue what Tex was doing, he just knew that he was a genius. I’m sure I don’t know either, but what he did was incredibly funny.”

The seven cartoons included in the TCM tribute meet the “incredibly funny” standard. They were produced for MGM. These are not as well known or as widely seen as his cartoons for Warner Bros., where, most notably, Avery directed A WILD HARE (’40), the cartoon that established Bugs Bunny’s brash personality. Avery was an outlier at the tony studio that boasted “more stars than there are in the heavens.” MGM did make sparkling and sophisticated romantic comedies directed by the likes of George Cukor and Ernst Lubitsch, but MGM was where clowns went to die.

Buster Keaton wrote in his memoir that signing with MGM was “the worst mistake” of his career. THE CAMERMAN (’28) was an auspicious beginning, but gradually, Keaton lost the lion’s share of his creative control, suffered studio interference and was partnered with Jimmy Durante. The Marx Brothers’ association with the studio likewise began promisingly with A NIGHT AT THE OPERA (‘35), but soon the iconoclastic highs of the brothers’ Paramount films were but a dim memory and the brothers were relegated to playing second fiddle to insipid romantic leads like Kenny Baker and Florence Rice in AT THE CIRCUS (‘39).

But MGM could not tame Tex Avery. Or perhaps studio execs didn’t think animation was worth the time and trouble to meddle with, allowing him to work unimpeded. The best of the cartoons he made for the studio between 1942-55 put the “mad” in madcap, if that’s your idea of a good time. In his book, Adamson observes: “No artist, in any century, on any continent, in any medium, has ever succeeded in creating his own universe as thoroughly and overwhelmingly as Tex Avery.”

You might say that a Tex Avery cartoon is like that proverbial box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get. “Say, what kind of a cartoon is this gonna be, anyway?” asks the title character in SCREWBALL SQUIRREL (‘44), another of the Avery 7 to be featured in TCM’s mini-Avery-palooza. Well, it’s NOT going to be a charming Disney-esque romp with adorable forest creatures. Screwball Squirrel sees to that when he takes one of them behind a tree and violently disposes of him, assuring the audience, “The funny stuff will start as soon as the phone rings.”

BAD LUCK BLACKIE and KING-SIZE CANARY, two masterpieces that are highlights of TCM’s Avery cartoon block, break all rules of the physical world and nature. In the former, a black cat brings instant bad karma each time he crosses the path of a bullying bulldog. At one point, the unfortunate pooch must dodge a succession of falling objects that escalate from a sink to a battleship. In the latter, a chase between a cat, mouse and dog escalates to gigantic proportions thanks to a bottle of Jumbo Gro.

What critic James Agee wrote about the Marx Brothers also applies to Avery in that even lesser Tex is better worth seeing than most other things I can think of. SYMPHONY IN SLANG (’51) is a succession of silly sight gags inspired by a hipster’s arrival at the Pearly Gates. He tells his life story to a befuddled Noah Webster, who pictures literal translations to such phrases as, “I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth,” “It was raining cats and dogs” and “I died laughing.”

SCREWBALL SQUIRREL features some great self-referential gags, such as the title character peeking ahead to the next scene to figure out what to do next. But the character was so obnoxious that he was actually killed off at the end of his fifth, and final, cartoon.

Avery’s influence is vast. When in THE LITTLE MERMAID (‘89), Sebastian’s jaw drops like an anvil when he spies Ariel nursing an injured Prince Eric, that’s a classic Tex Avery take. THE MASK (‘94) pays direct homage to RED HOT RIDING HOOD when Jim Carrey’s Mask man is undone by nightclub chanteuse Cameron Diaz. And the Tex Avery force is strong in Animaniacs’ helter-skelter pacing and fourth-wall breaking.

But there is nothing like the real thing. No one made cartoons that were loonier. The secret? As Avery told Joe Adamson, he didn’t think in terms of the age of his audience: “I tried to do something I thought I would laugh at if I were to see it on the screen.”

Hayley Mills wasn’t the typical child star. Unlike picture perfect Shirley Temple and Margaret O’Brien, the British actress was a bit of a scruff, a gangly, wild colt. Though cute, she certainly wasn’t adorable. But the daughter of Oscar-winning actor John Mills and author Mary Hayley Bell and baby sister of actress Juliet Mills definitely had the undefinable star quality. You couldn’t take your eyes off of her. And she had a naturalness and ease on screen. She was an “every girl.”

And that’s one of the reasons baby boomers fell madly in love with her in POLLYANNA (‘60), the first of six films she made for Walt Disney and for which she won the last Juvenile Oscar handed out by the Academy for her endearing turn as the eternally optimistic orphan who changes everyone’s lives. She just seemed like one of us. We all wanted to be her friend. And, as she got older, her young female fans wanted to be her; and boys wanted her to be their girlfriend. Even now, a smile lights across the faces of boomers whenever you mention her name.

In fact, when I recently posted on Facebook that I was watching her hit comedy THE TROUBLE WITH ANGELS (‘66) for the first time since it was released, people came out of the woodwork expressing their love for the movie and Mills, who is now 74.

Before she became POLLYANNA, Mills made her first credited film debut in J. Lee Thompson’s acclaimed black-and-white thriller TIGER BAY (‘59). She plays a tomboy named Gillie, who lives with her aunt in the poor and racially diverse Tiger Bay district of Cardiff. Gillie witnesses the murder of a woman in her apartment building by her young Polish sailor boyfriend (Horst Buchholz) in a moment of rage. Though she initially fears for her life when Buchholz tracks her down, these two lost souls end up developing a strong bond. Her father John Mills plays the police superintendent trying to find him and is thwarted every step of the way by Gillie, who lies constantly to keep the detective away until the young man leaves the country.

Again, she gives such a natural “coy”-free performance, you feel that Thompson had plucked a young ruffian off the streets of Tiger Bay to play Gillie. The first time I saw Mills on screen was in 1961 in one of her biggest hits for the Disney studio THE PARENT TRAP, a trippy comedy about twin sisters who meet at summer camp after their divorced parents (Maureen O’Hara and Brian Keith) had divvied them up as babies when the marriage ended. (One has to admit in this day and age, it’s more than a bit creepy and cruel that parents would do something like this.) The twins decide to play a trick on their parents, while plotting a way to get them back together, by switching places after summer camp.

Not only did the movie prove Mills could handle comedy with great aplomb, THE PARENT TRAP also turned Mills into a singing star. Not that she could really sing, but Richard and Robert Sherman penned Mills the catchy “Let’s Get Together” which became a hit tune.

Her next film for Disney IN SEARCH OF THE CASTAWAYS (‘62), an adventure based on a Jules Verne story, was the weakest of her Disney films. I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for her follow-up movie SUMMER MAGIC (1963), a nostalgic comedy with the Sherman brothers once again supplying the songs. She was 17 when she made THE MOON-SPINNERS (‘64), a mystery thriller set in Crete based on a Mary Stewart best-seller. This time around, she is paired with the handsome British actor Peter McEnery as her love interest. Every girl in the audience also wanted McEnery as their love interest. Reviews were decidedly mixed, but Bosley Crowther in the New York Times stated the actress was growing up, noting “the ripening attractiveness” of Mills.

Mills ended her time with Disney with the blockbuster That Darn Cat! (‘65), an entertaining comedy about a mischievous Siamese cat named DC owned by Mills that ends up helping the FBI in solving a robbery and kidnapping. While she was under contract, Mills also made films in England including the lauded WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND (‘61) based on her mother’s 1959 novel of the same name. Directed by Bryan Forbes, the family film revolves around three farm children who find a bearded fugitive (Alan Bates) in their barn. Because he utters “Jesus Christ” when he is found, the three believe he really is Jesus. Mills received a BAFTA nomination for her charming performance.

Her first post-Disney film after GYPSY GIRL (’66) was the heavenly comedy THE TROUBLE WITH ANGELS (‘66) directed by Ida Lupino. I loved it when I first saw it and adored it when I revisited it recently. Mills and June Harding play the best of friends at a Catholic girls’ school and in between studying get into all sorts of trouble much to the chagrin of the Mother Superior (Rosalind Russell). Attending Catholic girls’ school for nine years, there’s little wonder TROUBLE WITH ANGELS is my favorite Mills film. TROUBLE WITH ANGELS also would be the last Mills film I would see in a movie theater.

THE FAMILY WAY (‘66), was her first grown-up role and marked her first nude scene. Not only that, Mills created a scandal when she had a romance with the film’s director Roy Boulting, who not only had children, but he was nearly 33 years older than Mills. The two would marry for six years in the 1970s and a have son, Crispian. Most of her films during that time certainly weren’t for her young fans and frankly weren’t very good.

Mills took a six-year hiatus and returned in the acclaimed 1981 miniseries The Flame Trees of Thika which aired on PBS’s Masterpiece Theatre. She’s been going strong ever since, even touring Australia in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I. Mills returned to the Disney fold doing several projects including the Disney Channel movie THE PARENT TRAP II (‘86), for which I got to interview her in person, and the Disney Channel film BACK HOME (‘89), for which I interviewed her for the Los Angeles Times.

I asked her—and yes, she was charming—in 1990 if it was different being a child star in Hollywood versus being one in England. “Quite different,” she noted. “As far as my own life was concerned going over to America was a most wonderful holiday. It was like going to Disneyland. America was a playground, and everything was larger than life. The sun was always shining, and the cars were always clean and shiny, and everyone said, ‘You’re welcome.’ It was rows and rows of comics, ice cream sundaes and endless channels on the TV. I was very well looked after. All I was expected to do was learn my lines and get on the set. Of course, when I came back to England I came back to reality and had to go to board school and behave myself!”

To say we’re all sorely disappointed that the 2020 TCM Classic Film Festival was canceled this year, is a gross understatement. For many of us, this annual gathering of classic film fans in the heart of Hollywood is the highlight of our year. Hotels…flights…passes, getting together again with new old friends and old new friends is a blast! But a pandemic is nothing to play around with. Better safe than sorry.

Have no fear, though. TCM IS on the case. They have decided to have the TCM Classic Film Festival: Special Home Edition this weekend (April 16-19), where films and interviews from past Festivals are being aired. TCM is screening one of my favorite films from the 1930’s this Sunday, April 18th and it stars the only actor in classic films who fills me with pathos and revulsion simultaneously.

MAD LOVE (‘35) is a remake of THE HANDS OF ORLAC, a 1924 Conrad Veidt film where a murderer’s hands are grafted onto a musician. The movie was made again in 1960 with Mel Ferrer and Christopher Lee playing the symbiotic duo. I’ll wager the doctor in neither the 1924 movie nor the 1960 film could match the disturbing intensity of Peter Lorre:

Gogol: “I, a poor peasant, have conquered Science. Why can’t I conquer Love? Don’t you understand? You must be mine, not his. You ARE mine!” 

Lorre stars as Dr. Gogol in MGM’s turn at horror. This has got to be the more disturbing and macabre entries of this entire TCMFF Special Home Edition weekend. In the movie, Lorre plays a well-respected surgeon with a steady hand who repairs the maimed, deformed and broken. But nightly, he attends a play in the Grand Guignol-style, where the torture porn of a beautiful actress onstage almost sends him into a swoon. Frances Drake plays the actress Yvonne Orlac. I confess, I’ve only seen three of Drake’s films. She left the business early, having a mere 24 credits to her name (See BOLERO [‘34]), but she’s very good here expressing love, revulsion and downright fear as the object of Lorre’s obsession.

In the movie, Lorre is invited to the cast party, where he learns that Drake’s quitting the play to join her new pianist husband on his concert tour. At the party, with a slice of wedding cake, one gets to kiss the bride. When Lorre steps up to the plate, he plants a good one on her to the glee of the cast; we see her swallow her revulsion. However, she’ll soon need the good doctor’s help in performing an operation to prevent her husband’s mangled hands from being amputated due to a train wreck.

Gogol: “Is there no room in your heart, even pity, for a man who had never known the love of a woman, but who has worshiped you since the day he walked by…I can’t be silent any longer. You are a woman, you must’ve known!” 

 Yvonne: “Yes, I know of your feeling for me. I traded on it.”

There’s enough blame on both sides, to be fair. Yvonne knew she was stringing him along to get his help and expertise; and Dr. Gogol knew she would not love him…she’s married. He’s a pitiable strange bird and she’s unavailable to him. He doesn’t take no for an answer. Aye, there’s the rub. There comes a point when unrequited love is truly just emotional masochism. And when Lorre turns that corner and puts a plan in place to really make her his, the movie goes into high gear. He fancies himself Pygmalion, though a twisted one. Lorre, the actor, is fearless. He’s not afraid to look odd. He’s not afraid to give in to the emotion of the insane - wearing it…sitting with it…washing in it. He wallows in it. You’ll know what I mean when you see him. It’s the most unsettling thing I’ve seen in all the 1930s.

You might know Karl Freund from his directing years of I Love Lucy, but he had a hefty, creative career in the movies. He directed the seminal DRACULA (‘31), THE MUMMY (‘32) and lit the screen for Fritz Lang’s masterpiece METROPOLIS (‘27). Now, he doesn’t bring all his German cinematography of shadows, Dutch angles and Expressionism to bear in this film. After all, it is still glossy, shiny MGM. It’s pretty straight-forward directing. Freund does give me a moment I love, however. Drake is in a locked room and through the small window in the door she sees Lorre coming up the stairs totally batshit crazed. The camera dollies in towards Drake as she sees this frightening sight and it draws you in.

Rounding out the recognizable cast of character actors are: the distraught and horrified husband (Colin Clive); some minor comic relief from Ted Healy and Sara Haden as a reporter and maid respectively; Edward Brophy as the guillotined, knife-throwing murderer whose hands are grafted onto Clive; Keye Luke as the doctor’s assistant; and look…it’s child actor Cora Sue Collins, who appeared at the TCM Classic Film Festival in 2019 for the screening of this film.

For this not being an all-out monster movie a la DRACULA or FRANKENSTEIN (’31), it is intense and unsettling. It also begs the question, is all fair in love and war? I don’t know. But you know how the old song goes:

If you can’t be with the one you love…don’t do what Dr. Gogol does.

Anybody who has attended the TCM CLASSIC FILM FESTIVAL in Hollywood knows what a magical experience the event is for fans of vintage movies. There’s such good will, love and friendship there that it’s hard to choose what the favorite event is at the Festival, which would have celebrated its 11th edition this April until Covid-19 cancelled the four days of classic films.

One of the most popular presentations are the “Live From” events, which features some of the greatest actors and filmmakers from the Golden Age of Hollywood in conversation with the late, great TCM host Robert Osborne and now with Ben Mankiewicz, the channel’s primary host. These interviews have played on TCM over the years. And a select few, including interviews with Oscar-winners Luise Rainer, Eva Marie Saint, Faye Dunaway and such legends as Norman Lloyd and Peter O’Toole, will be featured during the TCM Classic Film Festival: Special Home Edition.

As a movie writer for 26 years at the L.A. Times. I’ve had the good fortune of interviewing many of these legends. Here are some memories of my conversations with two of my favorites, Eva Marie Saint and Norman Lloyd.

Eva Marie Saint

I have lost count of how many times I have interviewed Eva Marie Saint, now 95, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar as Edie, the girlfriend of Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando), in Elia Kazan’s 1954 Academy Award-winning masterpiece ON THE WATERFRONT.

But I remember the first time.

I was at the now defunct Los Angeles Herald Examiner when I was assigned to talk to her in 1986 about director Garry Marshall’s NOTHING IN COMMON, which stars Tom Hanks and Jackie Gleason in his final film. Saint had long been a favorite of mine. I was a huge fan of ON THE WATERFRONT and admired her performances in 1957’s RAINTREE COUNTY opposite Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 romantic thriller NORTH BY NORTHWEST opposite Cary Grant and Otto Preminger’s 1960 epic EXODUS, where Saint was romanced by Paul Newman. I had also seen her on stage in 1979 in Los Angeles opposite Henry Fonda in the hit comedy First Monday in October.

From the moment she opened the door of the Westwood townhome she shared with her late director husband Jeffrey Hayden, I felt an immediate bond with her. Not only did we both hail from the same hometown, East Orange, N.J., Saint was down-to-earth, friendly and smart as a whip. And she’s always been frank and funny.

The last time I interviewed her in person in 2014, Saint talked about doing live TV in the late 1940s and 1950s. “My God, terrible things happened,” she said with a laugh, including exposing more than her talent on the soap opera One Man’s Family. Saint was doing a scene in a small pool opposite the actor who was playing her brother. At one point, she recalled, “someone was doing something offstage. You learn not to look away from what you are doing because you can be distracted.” But she finally looked, only to see a man off camera pulling his shirt up and down. “I looked down and saw my boobies were showing coast to coast,” Saint said, laughing. “I just kept in the scene and slid under the water. What could I do? It was live television. To this day, all of these years later, someone will say to me ‘Miss Saint, you were doing One Man’s Family…’ and I’ll say, ‘I remember.’”

Saint was married to Hayden for 65 years until his death at 90 in late 2016. And he was as exceptional a person as Saint, sweet and friendly. I asked her how the two met. Saint was a young actress and model in New York in the late 1940s, and Hayden was working in radio at NBC. “He saw me on the subway from the back, and he liked the way I walked,” Saint said with a smile. Hayden also noticed a big black book she was carrying that was her modeling portfolio. “The book I was carrying said ‘Eva Marie Saint’ in gold letters,” she noted. “He thought ‘I like the name.’”

They were fated to meet. Not long after seeing her on the subway, Hayden saw her again at Radio City talking with actor Arnold Stang, who also happened to be the only actor that Hayden knew. “So, he could go over to Arnold and Arnold would say ‘Hi Jeff, do you know Eva Marie?’”

The married in 1951, had two children and grandchildren.

My heart skipped a beat when she talked about how strong their marriage was after six decades. Saint noted she had been “thinking about life and I guess I was a little low. I said ‘Jeffrey, what in today’s world inspires you?’ He put his head up and said ‘You.’”

Norman Lloyd

Norman Lloyd, who is still going strong at 105, is one of the most accomplished actors/producers/directors. Beginning as child actor in the 1920s, he starred on Broadway as a member of Orson Welles’ legendary Mercury Theatre in the late 1930s.

He’s appeared in countless movies, including as the evil villain who falls from the Statue of Liberty in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1942 classic thriller SABOTEUR, as well as Jean Renoir’s 1945 THE SOUTHERNER and Charlie Chaplin’s 1952 LIMELIGHT. And TV audiences may know him as the kindly Dr. Auschlander on NBC’s acclaimed medical drama St. Elsewhere from 1982-88.

Lloyd also had one of the strongest marriages in Hollywood. He and his wife Peggy, who died in 2011, were married for 75 years. Having interviewed him several times, I can attest that he is a terrific storyteller and the sweetest of peas.

When I chatted with him at his cozy Brentwood home in 2014, he was still playing tennis twice a week and regaling me with stories about Hitchcock (Hitchcock, Renoir and Chaplin were among his best friends.) In fact, Hitchcock saved his career in the 1950s. Lloyd had discovered jobs hard to find because of the Hollywood Blacklist. Though he was not officially blacklisted, his liberal leanings and friendship with those who had been blacklisted hurt his career.

That didn’t stop Hitchcock from hiring him to be an associate producer on his classic anthology series Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1957. CBS told the Master of Suspense that there was a “problem” with Lloyd. Hitch persisted. “He said three words: ‘I want him,’” Lloyd recalled.

The Tiffany network, not wanting to upset one of the biggest directors in the world, immediately greenlit Lloyd, who initially worked with producer Joan Harrison, eventually became the executive producer of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour which ran until 1965. Lloyd also directed episodes of the series, including the devilishly fun 1960 installment “Man from the South,” starring Peter Lorre, Steve McQueen and the King of Cool’s then-wife Neile Adams.

Hitchcock and Lloyd reunited in the late 1970s for THE SHORT NIGHT, a thriller Hitch was hoping to make after 1976’s FAMILY PLOT. “Hitch, by the way, was not at his physical best,” Lloyd recalled. “He was really getting old and had difficulty walking. We were working on the script one day and he says to me, ‘You know, Norm. We are not going to make the picture.’”

Lloyd asked him what he meant by the statement. “He said to me a classic line: ‘Because it’s not necessary.’ When he died, the Directors Guild asked me to write a tribute to him, which I did. That’s what I ended it with.“

The only time I’ve seen the lights come up at the TCM Classic Film Festival to reveal more people crying than not was at a 2016 screening of ONE POTATO, TWO POTATO (‘64).

ONE POTATO, TWO POTATO follows the burgeoning friendship, cautious courtship and subsequent marriage of Julie (Barbara Barrie), a white woman, and Frank (Bernie Hamilton), a black man, as they navigate the prejudices surrounding them in 1960s suburban Ohio. To compound their difficulties, Julie’s ex-husband Joe (Richard Mulligan) re-enters the picture years after deserting his family. Upon discovering their daughter Ellen (Marti Mericka) is growing up in an interracial household with a new baby brother, Joe starts a custody battle that leads to a devastating finale.

ONE POTATO, TWO POTATO debuted three years before the historic Loving vs. Virginia Supreme Court case struck down anti-miscegenation laws throughout the country, the same year GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER (‘67) hit theaters, which also features an interracial romance. The latter movie benefited from its Hollywood stars and studio backing, while ONE POTATO, TWO POTATO was a labor-of-love indie film with no big-name actors; in fact, director Larry Peerce moved in with his parents to save money before filming. I’ve always believed the production’s independent spirit contributed to its poignant story and performances, resulting in an unpretentious picture that’s beautiful, heartbreaking and enraging.

Speaking of heartbreaking, the film’s gut-wrenching finale stuck with me long after my first viewing. Anchored by Barrie and Mericka’s distressing performances, the scene shows Ellen being torn from her loving family because a judge ruled that it was America’s racial problem that “creates an unwholesome atmosphere for a child of a mixed marriage” (Los Angeles Times), not the upbringing itself. Which is worse: The emotional damage inflicted on a child plucked from her mother thinking it’s her fault or the perceived impropriety of an interracial household? Today, it’s obvious that only one of those options is damaging, but as ONE POTATO, TWO POTATO harrowingly shows, it wasn’t long ago that society deemed the latter as more harmful.

I found it particularly thoughtful that the film shows how Ellen is oblivious to discrimination. When the judge tries to discern whether she views her family as different, Ellen earnestly tells him that her brother is only different because he’s a boy. Her innocence makes the ending that much more painful. Love and acceptance were clearly instilled in her home life, and based upon what we see of the racist Joe, the audience knows he will teach Ellen the opposite – a shining example of how prejudice is taught and passed down through the generations.

Peerce wanted to make a movie outside the mainstream, and with 14 states still upholding antiquated miscegenation laws in 1964, he couldn’t get much further than this. The genesis for ONE POTATO, TWO POTATO came from various articles on multiracial couples and an idea penned by Orville H. Hampton. Though Ohio lifted its ban on interracial marriage in 1887, all the southern states still had laws in effect. While Peerce didn’t try to hide the kind of story they were telling from locals during filming in Painesville, Ohio, he didn’t parade it around either. In the early 1960s, miscegenation was still verboten onscreen, and when asked by Donald Bogle at TCMFF if the public’s reaction and possible censorship worried him, Peerce responded “sure,” adding, “But we were young and stupid, which kind of makes you daring, even if you don’t want to be.“

That audacious attitude paid off critically. “It speaks out resolutely on a generally shunned social theme that is a credit to the courage of its producers and the team that made it,”

The New York Times lauded. Critics praised ONE POTATO, TWO POTATO’s tactful yet frank approach to such a delicate subject matter, and the film even earned an Oscar nomination for Best Writing. However, mirroring the plot’s theme of prejudice, Peerce faced bias from Hollywood. “Wherever we went, we were told we didn’t have a chance,” he said in a New York Times interview. A Hollywood selection committee that submitted films to foreign festivals not only refused to send ONE POTATO, TWO POTATO out, they didn’t even watch the whole movie. “We think we know where they turned off the picture,” Peerce later told The Los Angeles Times, referring to the kiss Julie and Frank share.

So, Peerce traveled overseas to meet with distributors in various European cities, which led to a French committee accepting it directly into the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. “They told us we couldn’t bring this film to Europe because Europeans wouldn’t understand this problem,” he told The Los Angeles Times. “But it looks as if they were wrong.” They sure were. So wrong, in fact, that Barbara Barrie won Best Actress at Cannes and the film received an enthusiastic standing ovation.

“There’s actually no other way I can introduce this woman than saying that I am going to share the stage with the most exemplary human being I have ever met in my life.” That was how Eddie Muller introduced 100-year-old Marsha Hunt before a screening of one of her favorite movies, NONE SHALL ESCAPE (1944), at the TCM Classic Film Festival in 2018.

The affable centenarian, who made her film debut in 1935 at the age of 17, always appears so composed and amiable during appearances—she truly is one of the most lovely and appreciative people I’ve ever met—but that congeniality belies a life spent working hard and fighting for what’s right. Aside from her illustrious film career (including 1939’s THESE GLAMOUR GIRLS, 1940’s PRIDE AND PREJUDICE and 1948’s RAW DEAL), Ms. Hunt rallied against the unjust witch-hunt that the Blacklist era brought to Hollywood in support of her colleagues and her own career, and she also spent over six decades working for various humanitarian causes across the globe as one of the world’s first celebrity activists.

I’ve had the opportunity to speak to Ms. Hunt a few times over the years, mostly focusing on what she’s called the happiest time of her professional life: her work as a contract player for MGM from 1939-1945. During a conversation with her in 2014, she confirmed her deep appreciation of her time at the legendary studio:

“It was MGM that gave me what I wanted, which was to grow as an actress in every dimension. For that I needed challenge and an enormous range of characters to play instead of the love interest or ‘good girl,’ and at Metro they gave me every type of role to play; no two were alike… I was forever thrilled and grateful to MGM for that. Stardom was not the idea for me nor was it my goal.”

I was fortunate that Ms. Hunt opened up so much about her time on the backlot with me. She shared anecdotes ranging from humorous run-ins with legends (she arrived at the studio around the same time every day as Greta Garbo) to the mundane things that the company took care of (she never had to gas up her car, because MGM always made sure her tank was full) and the surprising people she palled around with most on the lot (to me, at least: it was the musicians).

To learn more about Ms. Hunt’s MGM days, you can read my full 2014 interview with her here. Late last year, I had the chance to follow-up with her about her MGM experience—and ask one question about her sweet friendship with Norman Lloyd.

Kim Luperi: You were dubbed “Hollywood’s Youngest Character Actress.” What part do you think was the farthest from your personality?

Marsha Hunt: Betty in THESE GLAMOUR GIRLS, my first suicide. A college widow desperate for attention and willing to try anything.

Kim Luperi: Do you recall your most challenging role?

Marsha Hunt: Perhaps aging roles.

Kim Luperi: What was the atmosphere like on the MGM lot during World War II?

Marsha Hunt: You hardly knew there was a war going on except for the missing leading men like Jimmy Stewart and Robert Taylor. We were conscious of the war, and I, at least, spent all my free time on set in my portable dressing room signing pictures. There was an awareness, I think, throughout that what we were making [movies] that would be seen around the world in different conditions. And the hope that what we were making would be a distraction or diversion. Any drama took their minds off their own plight. I learned this from them [G.I.s]—how much movies took them away from the horror of what they were forced to encounter. I learned from them how our movies were the greatest favor we could give them—a pretend world. They told me this on the Saturday nights I worked at the Hollywood Canteen. 

Kim Luperi: Did you like working within the studio system’s confines?

Marsha Hunt: Yes, because there had to be some sense of order. You simply adhered to the way things were.

Kim Luperi: As a contract player, did you have any say over what parts you played?

Marsha Hunt: Never!

Kim Luperi: Were there roles you campaigned for or were particularly excited to be assigned?

Marsha Hunt: Rarely. You had no access. You couldn’t sneak a peek at a role. I was off-beat because I was a character actress.

Kim Luperi: How active was MGM in promoting you along with your movies?

Marsha Hunt: Emily Torchia was the woman assigned to me. She got me a lot of interviews. I was photographed a great deal for publicity because I had been a model and was comfortable with being photographed. The foreign press was interested in us and the French were assigned to me because I spoke some French.

Kim Luperi: Did they send you to premieres or have you make appearances?

Marsha Hunt: I went to a few premieres with Van Johnson.

Kim Luperi: As someone interested in fashion, do you recall any of your MGM films that had particularly memorable costumes?

Marsha Hunt: Probably PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. Irene loved to dress me. I had a good clothes figure.

Kim Luperi: I saw photos of you with Norman Lloyd at the TCM Classic Film Festival last year. Have you been friends since you worked together in A Letter for Evie?

Marsha Hunt: We didn’t see each other for some time and then he directed me in a few plays. Years later we came across one another socially through mutual friends and there was a great connection.

Catch Marsha Hunt in three of her MGM pictures this month: CRY ‘HAVOC’ (1944) on June 20th, UNHOLY PARTNERS (1941) on June 29th and PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1940) on June 30th. She also co-stars in SMASH-UP, THE STORY OF A WOMAN (1947) on June 30th.

Special thanks to Roger Memos and Elizabeth Lauritsen for their help securing this interview.