Uber-producer David O’ Selznick would bring director Alfred Hitchcock to America from England, team him up with one of the most popular novels of the day, Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 phenom, “Rebecca,” and win that year’s Academy Award for Best Picture (Selznick’s second in a row after a little programmer called “Gone With the Wind.”) Not a bad start.  Of course, it helps if you make an amazing motion picture in the process, which is exactly what “Rebecca” is.

Our heroine is never named other than with the pronoun “I,” and is portrayed by the then somewhat-unknown Joan Fontaine (sister of Olivia De Havilland), who offers up one of history’s most impressive “arrivals” as a full-blown movie star. Our heroine is an innocent who’s terribly vulnerable and a newlywed very much in love with her husband, Maxim (Laurence Olivier), a deeply troubled man still working through the death of his first wife.

Swept off her feet, this orphan who made un undignified living as a paid companion and doormat to an insufferable woman, is suddenly thrust into a world she never knew existed. Maxim is incredibly wealthy and sole-owner of Manderley, a breathtakingly gothic estate populated with servants and also the intimidating and suffocating shadow of Rebecca, Maxim’s dead wife.

It’s within this shadow that the new mistress of the house, already a fragile flower, wilts even further. Rebecca’s hold on the living is supernatural and the primary keeper of that flame is housekeeper Miss Mrs. Danvers (an unforgettable Judith Anderson), who wields the memory of her former mistress like a psychological club to break down her “replacement.” Miss Danvers is destined to succeed until a shipwreck uncovers truths that will either result in the destruction of all involved or their salvation.

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6:45pm PST – A Star Is Born (1937)  – A fading matinee idol marries the young beginner he’s shepherded to stardom. Cast: Janet Gaynor, Fredric March, Adolphe Menjou, May Robson Dir: William A. Wellman C-111 mins, TV-G

While few films top the marvelous Judy Garland musical update of this classic, cautionary Hollywood tale, this version (itself a sort-of remake of George Cukor’s1932 “What Price Hollywood?” – Cukor would direct the Garland version, as well) offers up a memorable, heartbreaking performance from Fredric March as the sad and sodden Norman Maine, a has-been movie star living in the shadow of his famous wife. Lionel Stander also blazes through his scenes as a ruthless studio press-hack who inadvertently brings ruin to those around him all in the name of doing his job of creating movie stars and keeping them movie stars. (more…)