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With the gradual passing of opening movie credits, we also lost a vital element that distinguishes many so-called “classic” movies: the original music score, including a heroic, memorable opening theme. What’s the last film you remember that had a score you could hum while walking home from the theater — a piece of music you knew you'd always remember and associate with the film?

As most of you know, I spend my life being picky about movies. There are just a few actors I’ll watch in almost anything. Jean Gabin makes that very short list. Some reading this may have forgotten him, or never even heard of him. His heyday, after all, was nearly eighty years ago, and he’s been gone for over forty. Yet in his prime, no one could touch him.

Few will ever forget this year’s Oscars, when Faye Dunaway read off the wrong card and mistakenly announced “La La Land” as Best Picture winner. Awkward as that was, there have been other memorably offbeat moments in Oscar history.

In the 1930s, when so many women in America were still relegated to the kitchen and nursery, one actress in Hollywood became a star playing independent women who worked for a living, competing with men in a man’s world. Her name was Jean Arthur.

Buster became part of his parents’ act when he was just three, and the routine he did with his father made full use of the the tiny young boy’s uncanny flexibility. It involved young Buster goading his Dad to the point where the older man would knock the kid around the stage, or even throw him off it. A luggage handle was sown into young Buster’s costume to make it easier to toss him. The act was often billed as “The Little Boy Who Can’t Be Damaged.”

If the stunningly talented, charismatic Barbara Stanwyck was hurt by not having picked up that coveted statuette over the course of four Best Actress nominations, she never showed it. And she wouldn’t have. She was too tough and too proud for that. And yes, I mean that as a compliment.

Ever have a bad hair day? Sure you have. You do everything you can to make things right, but nothing seems to work. “Oh, well,” you think. “At least it’ll be better tomorrow.”

With a Best Actor Oscar win for “Dallas Buyer’s Club,” and a hit TV series with “True Detective,” it can be said unequivocally that Matthew McConaughey’s millennium career slump is officially over. It was the nineties that made him, and the aughts that tested him.  Now in the teens, he comes into his own, this time (hopefully) for good. How well do you know this comeback kid?

She was born Ruth Elizabeth Davis in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1908, and was, by her own admission, a Yankee.