Just a few steps outside my room at Hillsdale’s Dow Hotel & Leadership Center hangs this wonderful portrait of George Washington.

Hillsdale Feels a Lot Like Yeshiva

Growing up in Brooklyn, I attended the Yeshiva of Flatbush, an Orthodox elementary school. Every morning, we solemnly recited the Pledge of Allegiance and then sang the Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem, thus affirming our loyalty to America and our love of Zion.

At Hillsdale College, before every lunch and dinner, I am delighted to report, we recite the Pledge of Allegiance and then a student leads us in a prayer.

Hillsdale is a non-denominational college, but the spirit of Judeo Christianity is alive and well.

I am more than comfortable here at Hillsdale, I feet right at home.

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I’m in Michigan, on assignment for Big Hollywood, to cover a four-day film festival presented by The Center for Constructive Alternatives at Hillsdale College.

For the next few days I will screen some landmark films from, arguably, Hollywood’s greatest year, and attend lectures by distinguished film scholars.

First impressions: Hillsdale is sort of like a set for a Frank Capra film.

Hillsdale College Campus.

About an hour from Detroit, Hillsdale is in the middle of flat farmland where white-tailed deer graze in golden fields.

Most of the buildings are informed by peaked roofs and references to classical Greek and Colonial architecture. The school is situated on 200 acres, has  100 full time faculty members and approximately 1,300 students.

Refusing all Federal dollars, Hillsdale is one of the few Conservative American colleges—Claremont and Grove City are two others that spring to mind—thus the school is truly independent, not shackled by government grants or political headwinds. (more…)

“I feel a little reactionary,” deadpans Hedy Lamarr in Comrade X, 1940.

On their improbable wedding night, anti-Communist reporter—remember them?—Clark Gable gives Bolshevik Hedy Lamarr a luscious, Adrian designed silk nightgown. Unlike Travis Banton, Adrian was concerned with silhouette and in this exquisitely bias-cut negligee—Gable just happens to have it in his suitcase—Hedy Lamarr’s figure is highlighted to a spectacular effect.

Long live the products of decadent American capitalism.

Capitalist Clark Gable puts Communist Hedy Lamarr in touch with her feminine side in Comrade X, 1940.

Hedy, playing a variation of Greta Garbo’s Ninotchka, is a humorless Soviet scold more concerned with industrial production than with her own femininity, which translates into her humanity.

TCM’s Shadows of Russia series, organized and programmed by my favorite  film blogger Self-Styled Siren and The New York Posts’s fine film critic Lou Lumenick, kicks into a refreshing mode—after the shallow and dopey Reds—as we view the lighter side of the Russian revolution.

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This year marks the 70th anniversary of Hollywood’s greatest year, 1939. Accordingly, Turner Classic Movies is celebrating the anniversary this month by showing 39 films released in ‘39, starting with The Wizard of Oz. Throughout the month, TCM will also screen a new documentary, 1939: Hollywood’s Greatest Year.

It’s a truism among fans of classic movies that 1939 was the Hollywood cinema’s greatest year. But if it has become something of a cliche to say so, it’s only because it’s so undeniably true.

It’s really rather amazing to consider how many classic or transcendentally classic films were released during that annus mirabilis. Among the most highly praised then and in the ensuring years were the following: (more…)