I have been MIA on this blog for most of the month of the March, for which I apologize. The reasons are fourfold:
- As the academic year progresses, I seem to have more and more work to do.
- To escape this burden, I took a vacation for a week over our Spring Break, during which time I watched no new movies, and tried my best to relax.
- I have been having some serious back issues for most of the month, which keep me from wanting to go out to movie theaters to sit in uncomfortable seats for hours at a time.
- I have been prepping for my next radio appearance – information below – and so have been spending what free time I have watching older films, as research.
But hopefully that research will have been worth it, for you, because . . .
On Friday, April 5, Linda DeLibero – Director, Film and Media Studies, Johns Hopkins University – and I will appear on Midday with Dan Rodricks on WYPR, 88.1FM, Baltimore’s NPR News Station, during the second hour, 1-2pm, to discuss the legacy of three movie stars – Spencer Tracy (1900-1967), Bette Davis (1908-1989) and Gregory Peck (1916-2003) – whose birthdays all happen to be on April 5.*
Do you have a favorite among the three? Do you know much about their life and work? Do you only think of Tracy as the curmudgeonly father in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, or Davis as the bitter aging diva in All About Eve, or Peck as the righteous crusader for racial justice in To Kill a Mockingbird? Well, there’s a lot more to each of them than that. In 1999, AFI ranked Bette Davis as the #2 female star of all time, Spencer Tracy as the #9 male star of all time, and Gregory Peck as the #12 male star of all time (see http://www.afi.com/100Years/stars.aspx). Tune in on April 5th at 1pm to find out why.
*Missed the show? We included an appreciation of the late, great Roger Ebert. You can listen to the show here: Midday with Dan Rodricks: 2013.04.05_Tracy-Davis-Peck
chrisreedfilm 