Love Letters to Old Hollywood

Esther Williams is amazing. I didn’t find this out until after I heard about her death last year, and I’ve been kicking myself for it ever since. My beloved Turner Classic Movies aired a whole marathon of her films as a tribute to her and I decided to take the opportunity to record a few and see what Esther was all about. I’m so happy I did.  The Esther train kept on rolling. Once I finished watching NEPTUNE’S DAUGHTER , THRILL OF A ROMANCE , and EASY TO WED , my sister gave me Esther’s autobiography for my birthday. If you haven’t read it yet, do yourself a favor and snatch it up. Ms. Williams was a fascinating woman, and incredibly strong. I never knew she had such an interesting life story and reading her book gave me another great role model. I had been hoping to write about Esther for a while now, but school kept me busy and then I had the pieces on Astaire and Rogers to write, so unfortunately Esther had to wait until today. Better late than never, right?

I recently read a post on the Alfred Hitchcock Geek blog that compared Hitch’s VERTIGO to Henry Hathaway’s NIAGARA , and all the similarities fascinated me. I had seen NIAGARA a few years back, and while I enjoyed the film, I hadn’t really taken a second look at it. I didn’t even know who Joseph Cotten was when I saw it, I just wanted to see Marilyn Monroe. I figured it was time I looked at this film again, taking notes this time.