"his-girl-friday"

“There's a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that that's all some people have? It isn't much, but it's better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan.”

The movie industry’s triumph in the 1930s lay in giving the public what it wanted to see. Its product was therapeutic diversion for millions of Americans who needed to get away from their troubles. By providing this crucial relief, American film reached a pinnacle of influence, at a time when most other industries were suffering severely.

“Dying is easy, comedy-that’s hard.”

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).

Here are twelve black and white classics, available now on Netflix, that I consider unmissable. I’m hoping that through these timeless films, we might open a few more young eyes to the glory and beauty of black and white cinema.

Ever since I first saw “The Awful Truth” on New Years’ Day, 1985 at New York’s Cinema Village Theater, I have been a vocal champion of this timeless screwball classic from 1937. Even with a crushing hangover, my (then-future) wife and I were convulsed, and I knew I had found a film I would return to for the rest of my life.

It was LA cartoonist Bob Thaves who wrote the following caption: “Sure he (Fred Astaire) was great, but don’t forget Ginger Rogers did everything he did…backwards and in high heels.”

The first day of shooting in late 1939, female star Rosalind Russell showed up on the set of Howard Hawks’s “His Girl Friday” feeling determined, but somewhat on edge. There were reasons beyond the uncertain prospect of starting something new.

One of the more fascinating aspects of cinema history lies in identifying those films (and filmmakers) whose true quality and contribution only get recognized well after the fact.