"A Few New Shades of Gray to a Story That Has All Too Often Been Told in Black-and-White"

"'From a hard-nosed business perspective,' observes Doherty, with sober detachment, 'the blacklist was a splendid success.' Through their carefully choreographed efforts to expunge the studios of any and all known Communists and fellow travelers, the Hollywood moguls were able to convince Washington and the movie-going public that they were at core true patriots. Loyal Americans, like the housewife who wrote to Hedda Hopper, could go to the movies with a clear conscience. To jeopardize the ample box-office profits on which they relied was, for most studio producers, and for a sizeable number of writers, directors and actors, not an option."

Noah Isenberg at The New Republic reviews Thomas Doherty's Show Trial: Hollywood, HUAC, and the Birth of the Blacklist.

"That Shadow Has Mostly Subsided"

"These days, the black-and-white artifices of midcentury studio films often seem overly mannered to viewer who didn't grow up watching them on TV as Harry and Sally did. And while young men will always struggle to define masculinity in a way that feels authentic, the world in which they're struggling has changed dramatically. The bitter stoicism that made Bogey cool in the eyes of Allen Felix might look like emotionally stunted self-pity to Felix's son."

Laura Miller at Slate explores if Casablanca is losing its reputation as a beloved movie. 

Of All the Gin Joints in All the Towns in All the World

"Bogart’s appeal was and remains completely adult—so adult that it’s hard to believe he was ever young. If men who take responsibility are hard to come by in films these days, it’s because they’re hard to come by, period, in an era when being a kid for life is the ultimate achievement, and 'adult' as it pertains to film is just a euphemism for pornography."

In The New York Times, Holly Brubach reviews Stefan Kanfer's Tough without a Gun: The Life and Extraordinary Afterlife of Humphrey Bogart.

No Sun Up in the Sky

"Since blacks were not allowed to live in Hollywood, 'Felix Young, a white man, signed for the house as if he was going to rent it,' Ms. Horne said. 'When the neighbors found out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived right across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing around a petition to get rid of me.' Bogart, she said, 'sent word over to the house that if anybody bothered me, please let him know.'"

Aljean Harmetz in The New York Times reports the death of Lena Horne.