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Here’s a bold statement: Giving your children the chance to watch classic films can be just as vital as anything they learn in school. 

Over the years, some film directors have had their own so-called stock companies. We’re not talking Wall Street stocks, folks, but rather groups of actors they felt so comfortable working with that they cast them in their projects time and again. The great John Ford’s stable of thespians was perhaps the biggest and most prolific in Hollywood history. In fact, some of its members appeared in the iconic director’s films over twenty times; bit player Jack Pennick worked with the filmmaker a whopping 41 times, although several of his roles were uncredited. Of course, starting in the forties, John Wayne was Ford’s favorite star. “The Duke,” who also had an abiding off-screen friendship with “Pappy” Ford, could be seen in 24 Ford enterprises, all starring roles in some of Ford’s most iconic work (you can see some of these movie titles at the end of this article).

In 1989: the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, Mikhail Gorbachev was named Soviet leader, and George H.W. Bush assumed the Presidency. Paula Abdul, Bobby Brown and Debbie Gibson were burning up the music charts, and folks at home were tuning to “Seinfeld,” “The Simpsons” and “Baywatch” when they weren’t reading “The Joy Luck Club,” “A Time to Kill” or “7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” At the movie theater, to paraphrase Frank Sinatra, “it was a very good year.”  Here are ten 1989 movies that I think have aged particularly well. See if you agree.   

What happens after an actor or actress wins an Academy Award?   The assumption is that the performer’s career skyrockets. Offers come pouring in. The thespian’s price tag certainly rises. What had been the usual “on-and-off” career of the struggling working actor suddenly gets a lot more hectic; members of the paparazzi who may not have known him or her from Adam (or Eve) are suddenly camped out on their doorstep.  This is what often occurs when one of these statuettes ends up in your hands. But not always. 

It’s nearly impossible to discuss a truly great movie without mentioning its musical score. Can you  honestly ponder the Spielberg classic “Jaws” (1975) without hearing those relentless, alternating two notes (played on a tuba!) that announce the killer shark’s arrival? Or think of “Rocky” (1976) without remembering how Bill Conti’s soaring trumpet theme made your heart race? 

In his hey-day, William Powell was the epitome of sophistication, wit and urbanity, with his distinctive baritone voice, custom tailored suits and pencil thin mustache. During the 1930s and 1940s, Powell was a bona fide box-office draw, starring opposite Myrna Loy as a tippling detective in “The Thin Man” series, as the sly hobo-turned-high society butler in the classic screwball farce “My Man Godfrey,” or in “The Great Ziegfeld,” playing legendary theater impresario Flo Ziegfeld.

The phenomenon known as typecasting has been practiced in Hollywood since its earliest days. Stars who excelled in certain kinds of roles were usually offered those kinds of parts repeatedly. To risk-averse studios, this simply made good business sense.

Part of the thrill of film is the costumes that dress up the screen. But there's a clear distinction between standard costume pictures where clothes simply help evoke a period, and those indelible outings in which great clothes not only draw our eye to their design, but also inform character.  It is, in fact, more accurate to say “wardrobe” than costumes, and, as with our own wardrobes, there are standouts that we return to again and again. These are pieces that are stars in their own right: Edith Head’s dresses for Grace Kelly in “Rear Window”; Cecil Beaton’s black and white dress for Audrey Hepburn, worn to Ascot in “My Fair Lady”; Lauren Bacall’s check suit in “The Big Sleep”; and countless bias-cut crepe gowns, Technicolor satins, wide hats, snug corsets, and acres of rhinestones, beads, and feathers. When paired with crackling dialogue, powerful stories, and flattering cinematography, these signature looks create the models for our own evolution in style.  Why not slip into our own look at some of the movies’ most memorable fashion moments...

Who are you calling “Diva?”   In real life, wrangling with a diva is a blood-boiling lesson in the perils of the high-maintenance personality. On film, though, there is an undeniable deliciousness to watching the diva — at a safe distance.   Divas are so cutting, so presumptuous, so brash, brassy, demanding, withering, larger than life, full of themselves, and they chew through scenery with cast iron teeth. And, in what might just be a law of nature, it often takes a diva to play a diva.