Billie Burke

[7] Cary Grant and Constance Bennett play a carefree wealthy couple who die in a car wreck after a night of hard partying. When they discover they are ghosts with no purpose, they decide to do a good deed in hopes of getting into heaven. So they try to rescue their stuffy bank manager friend, played by Roland Young, from the stifling lifestyle his wife …

[7] Spencer Tracy fronts this lighthearted Vincente Minnelli film about a father experiencing the emotional and financial turmoil of marrying off his only daughter. Elizabeth Taylor plays the daughter and Joan Bennett plays the mother, but this is all Tracy’s show. His droll narration and ‘grin and bear it’ attitude are what give the film its momentum and its low-key comedy. Apart from an effective …

[4] Katharine Hepburn’s affection for director George Cukor began with this, her feature film debut. A Bill of Divorcement stars John Barrymore as a man returning home after five years in a mental asylum. During that time, his wife (Billie Burke) and daughter (Hepburn) have moved on with their lives and are planning their respective weddings. Imagine their surprise when Barrymore returns home and promises …

[4] Frank Morgan (The Wizard of Oz) stars in this goofy comedy about a pet shop owner who gets mistaken for dead. His family cashes in his insurance policy, so when he surprises them all by being alive, they work with a clever but reluctant band leader (John Shelton) to hoodwink the bank and keep their money. The Ghost Comes Home is best when Morgan …

[6] Director George Cukor (Gaslight, Adam’s Rib) adapts this stage play about a wealthy couple who invite a handful of high society friends for, you guessed it — Dinner at Eight. Everyone’s got a problem or a secret they’re grappling with, and everyone seems to be connected to each other in some way. Lionel Barrymore’s on the verge of losing his shipping company while John …

[5] This early Best Picture Oscar winner is a three-hour mix of song, dance, and narrative, much like Broadway Melody before it. I was expecting a real stinker, especially when the opening credits revealed “Fashion Parades by Adrian”. But apart from being overly long and anachronistic, it wasn’t so bad. The narrative is fashioned loosely around the life of Broadway’s legendary Florenz Ziegfeld Jr (the …

[10] Those ruby slippers have lost no luster in the 80-plus years since the original release of The Wizard of Oz, a film that pretty much defines ‘timeless classic’. In the L. Frank Baum story, a spoiled farm girl named Dorothy (Judy Garland) is whisked away in a tornado to the magical land of Oz, where a good witch (Billie Burke) sends her down the …