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One of cinema's early comediennes, Dorothy Devore: between 1918 and 1930, the Ft. Worth-born actress was seen in nearly 100 movies, both features and shorts. Among them were 'Salvation Sue,' 'Naughty Mary Brown' and 'Saving Sister Susie,' all with frequent partner Earle Rodney. 'Comediennes of the Silent Era' & film historian Anthony Slide at the American Cinematheque Film historian and author Anthony Slide, once described by Lillian Gish as “our preeminent historian of the silent film,” will attend the American Cinematheque's 2017 Retroformat program “Comediennes of the Silent Era” on Sat., May 6, at 7:30 p.m., at the Spielberg Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. Slide will be signing copies of his book She Could Be Chaplin!: The Comedic Brilliance of Alice Howell (University Press of Mississippi), about the largely forgotten pioneering comedy actress of the 1910s and early 1920s. The book signing will take place at 6:30 p.

I have a curious habit, maybe you have it too, if you are a real movie geek, film fan, cinema addict, what have you.

A certain number of movies that I have seen and loved with all my heart were losers at the box office or were mercilessly slammed by critics, usually both. This doesn’t happen all the time, mind you. I know a bad movie when I see one. But several times I have seen a movie on opening day and loved it so much I was sure it would be a big hit and be loved by critics and film goers, nope, not all the time.

Here then is my own personal and highly eccentric top ten list, with some honorable mentions, of movies that lost out, yet I love them still, many of them desperately, hysterically, madly do I love these films, well anyway… let me tell you about it.

D.W. Griffith movies at the American Cinematheque (photo: D.W. Griffith circa 1915) A series of D.W. Griffith movies made at Biograph at the dawn of both the 20th century and the art of moviemaking will be screened at the American Cinematheque next weekend. "Retroformat Presents: D.W. Griffith at Biograph, Part 3 - 1909 – 1910" will take place on Saturday, April 26, 2014, at 7:30 p.m. in the Steven Spielberg auditorium of The Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. The evening will be hosted by Tom Barnes; musical accompaniment will be provided by Cliff Retallick. Among the D.W. Griffith films to be presented by Retroformat are the following: Lines of White on a Sullen Sea The Gibson Goddess The Mountaineer’s Honor Through the Breakers A Corner in Wheat Her Terrible Ordeal The Last Deal Faithful D.W. Griffith and his stars As found in Retroformat’s press release, those early D.W. Griffith efforts feature "innovative cinematography" by frequent Griffith collaborator G.W. Bitzer,...

In search of flickering reminders of Chaplin's La, Kira Cochrane follows in the footsteps of The Little Tramp, on the centenary of his arrival in Hollywood

Charlie Chaplin slept here: La hotels

The footprints and signature on the doorstep have faded, but there's no confusion about who built these studios: Charlie Chaplin, dressed as the Little Tramp, is painted on the door. Time-lapse footage of the construction of this mock Tudor village – now owned by the Jim Henson Company and identified by a 12ft statue of Kermit above the entrance – appears in How To Make Movies, a film directed by Chaplin in 1918. It shows the small hamlet emerging among the lemon groves that once undulated here, a city rising from the dust.

I wonder how much of Hollywood would exist if Chaplin had never arrived. If the manager of his touring vaudeville troupe had never received that abrupt, misspelled...

Veteran film producer and friend to many of Hollywood's stars

The office walls of the film producer AC Lyles, who has died aged 95, were plastered with celebrity photographs. He seemed to know everybody in Hollywood, from presidents and governors to the great names of film, such as Elizabeth Taylor, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. James Cagney, William Holden and Ronald Reagan were close personal friends.

Lyles worked for the same company, Paramount, for most of his life, starting as a mailroom office boy in 1937, after the studio's head, Adolph Zukor, gave in to his weekly letters begging for a job.

Indeed, he maintained that he had decided on his ninth birthday that he was going to be a producer. At the age of 10, he had a cleaning job at the Paramount cinema in his home town of Jacksonville, Florida, and seeing the silent film Wings, starring Clara Bow, reinforced this aspiration.

The Fountainhead with Patricia Neal and Gary Cooper Photo: Courtesy of TCM

Liza Minnelli, Kim Novak, Robert Wagner, Tippi Hedren and Debbie Reynolds in person. Black Narcissus, Vertigo, Cabaret, and The Fountainhead projected on gigantic screens at Grauman's Chinese and Egyptian Theatres. Could any classic film fan wish for more? You could. And, at this year's annual TCM Classic Film Festival, which takes place from April 12th through the 15th, you'd get more: Kirk Douglas, Stanley Donen, Angie Dickenson, Norman Lloyd, Rhonda Fleming, and Norman Jewison appearing at special events and screenings of Two for the Road, Chinatown, Casablanca, The Longest Day, and The Thomas Crown Affair. But before going on about this year's festival, a look back is essential.

Chinatown's Faye Dunaway and Jack NicholsonPhoto: Courtesy of TCM

TCM 2010 & 2011

TCM's 2010 festival featured an opening night restoration of George Cukor's A Star Is Born (1954) starring Judy Garland and...

The juicy, filthy memoir of a Hollywood fixer

In his greatly underrated 2006 biography of Nicole Kidman, the film critic David Thomson explained why he had made the surprising decision not to meet the actress in the course of his research. For the magic of cinema to work, he wrote, "the actress and the spectator must remain strangers". While honest about the hopeless desire he felt for Kidman while watching her films, he had no wish to encounter her in real life. Thomson places himself among those cinema-lovers who "would always protect and preserve desire by ensuring that it is never satisfied".

Such scruples don't seem to trouble Scotty Bowers. For decades, Bowers – now 88 – was the "go-to guy" in Hollywood for "whatever people desired". Bowers was a bisexual gas-pump jockey and later a bartender, a handsome ex-marine who made it his mission to satisfy the desires of the stars as well as his own.

"Retroformat – Idols of the Silent Era" will screen several rare early silents projected in 8mm at 7:30 p.m. on Sat., June 26, at the American Cinematheque’s Spielberg Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. "Retroformat" is not to be missed. Two D.W. Griffith shorts will be featured in the program: Confidence (1909, 11 min), starring Florence Lawrence (photo) — officially the very first movie celebrity to have a "name" (more details below); and Henry B. Walthall, Blanche Sweet and Lionel Barrymore in Death’s Marathon (1913, 17min). Also, Fox Trot Finesse (1915) with Mr. & Mrs. Sidney Drew (cousins of the Barrymores and namesakes to [...]...