HAPPY BIRTHDAY

I totally forgot another thing:

Yesterday (November 5) was the centennial of the birth of JOEL MCCREA. This multi-faceted actor may be my very favorite. He could do anything and make it look easy, which is probably why he was underrated and never received any awards. He did drama with Hitchcock, comedy with Preston Sturges, and Westerns with DeMille and Peckinpah. He started in bit parts at the end of the silent era, but quickly graduated to leading man and star status. He worked with (as mentioned above) some of the best directors, and opposite nearly all the top female stars of the era: Constance Bennett, Kay Francis, Dolores Del Rio, Fay Wray, Irene Dunne, Ginger Rogers, Barbara Stanwyck, Miriam Hopkins, Claudette Colbert, Joan Bennett, Frances Farmer, Merle Oberon, Sylvia Sidney, Loretta Young, Veronica Lake, Jean Arthur, Virginia Mayo, even Shirley Temple (he played her father, of course), Garbo (well, he had a bit role in her film Single Standard) and Marlene Dietrich (although his scenes in her film The Devil is a Woman were reshot with Cesar Romero in the released print); not to mention a host of lesser-known starlets. McCrea moved to making only Westerns in the mid-1940s, claiming he was more comfortable in them, and eventually retired to run his ranch in Southern California, emerging for a few more Western roles in the 1960s and 1970s. He had one of Hollywood's longest and most respected marriages, to actress Frances Dee, which lasted until his death in 1990.