Love Letters to Old Hollywood

Ever since elementary school, I've been obsessed with Sherlock Holmes. I was entranced by the adventures of the arrogant yet brilliant detective, and it is a fascination that has never gone away. I still reread Arthur Conan Doyle's stories from time to time and I was downright giddy when I visited the Holmes museum in London, located at -- where else? -- Baker Street. And then, of course, there are the myriad film and TV adaptations, some of which delight me and many of which never fail to irritate me in some way or another because they inevitably get too wrapped up in the iconography or they try to make the characters into something they are not. My hesitation about Holmes adaptations, however, was never the reason why I didn't seek out Billy Wilder's 1970 flick  The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes . My reluctance there stemmed from believing everything I read, which told me that the film was far from one of Wilder's best and that it was a stodgy, bloated mess. See...

  Tomorrow is National Classic Movie Day! To celebrate the classic film community's favorite day, I'm participating in the Six Films, Six Decades Blogathon, hosted by the Classic Film and TV Cafe. You can read the other entries here . ___________________________________________ Girl Shy (1924) I've been a fan of Harold Lloyd's ever since I first saw him in Safety Last! on the big screen for a college class, but my adoration for the man reached dizzying heights last month when I binged as much of his work as I could on the Criterion Channel. It was a magical experience, and the apex was without a doubt Girl Shy , one of the sweetest and purest romantic comedies I've ever seen. Lloyd plays a tailor who hopes to publish a book full of advice on how to woo women, despite the fact that he is painfully shy around them and develops a stutter any time a woman is around. On a train one day, though, he meets Jobyna Ralston -- my favorite of Lloyd's leading ladies -- and ...