Happy 2022! Birthday girl Kay Francis is TCM’s Star of the Month. Francis was featured in Women of pre-Code last year, this is a great...

By Jennifer Kellow-Fiorini Boris Karloff in the 1930's Boris Karloff was born William Henry Pratt November 23, 1887, in London England....

Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in The Raven, 1935. Both Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff were foreigners in their 40s when they became famous...

Gable is easily the most famous of any actor we’ve talked about from the pre-Code era. But the “King of Hollywood,” who is mostly...

In the silent era, Lillian Gish proclaimed him the most beautiful man in movies. But by the time talkies arrived, Richard Barthelmess was...

Edward G. Robinson in the early 1930's. In the pre-Code era audiences loved personality types we would now call character actors. In the...

America in the early 1930’s required a different mindset to survive and thrive than the generation before. Young men lamented that their...

Urbane implies high cultivation and poise coming from wide social experience — debonair, suave, smooth, sophisticated. Urbane is a word...

Often referred to as “the King of pre-Code” and “The Magnificent Scoundrel,” Warren William made 20 films between 1931 and the...

James Cagney worked on stage as a dancer/actor before becoming part of a new group of stars who, in 1931, were experimenting and refining...

Left to right, Richard Barthelmess, James Cagney, and Clark Gable Although societal shifts for women from the teens through the 1920s and...

Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable in It Happened One Night, 1934. In selecting a handful to write about, there were so many wonderful...

Barbara Stanwyck at the height of her career in the 1940's Barbara Stanwyck is easily the best-known actress of pre-Code in this series....

By Jennifer Kellow-Fiorini Norma Shearer, if known at all by casual moviegoers, may be remembered for playing the lead in the 1939 film,...

Today Greta Garbo is remembered for uttering one of the most famous quotes in film history, “I want to be alone.” She made only...

In the first half of her career Jean Harlow was cast as the unapologetic bad girl. And though Jean hated this image, because she was...

Rarely has a star shined so bright and packed so much into such a short lifetime as Jean Harlow — Hollywood’s first blonde bombshell. She...

Ninety years since her first screen performance, it’s hard to name a more likeable actress than Joan Blondell. With her big blue eyes and...

From 1929 to 1938 Kay Francis was the highest paid woman in Hollywood. Her best roles in the early 1930s saw her playing rich heiresses, the

Scantily clad bathing beauties in a Busby Berkeley number from Footlight Parade 1933 We think of “old Hollywood films” as innocent, with...