Turns out yesterday was Myrna Loy’s birthday.
She’d be 112 years old.
Loy was one of the many black-and-white beauties that completely fascinated me as a kid.
Her role as Nora Charles in The Thin Man and its sequels is the first thing in which I remember seeing her, in a late cycle dedicated by the Italian TV to the Powell/Loy mystery comedies.
And as I am, I might as well plug Reid & Wickliffe’s Thoughts on The Thin Man: Essays on the Delightful Detective Work of Nick and Nora Charles, that is a delightful book indeed.
But my veneration for Myrna Loy’s beauty and skill is based essentially on three pre-Code movies that are certainly very much on topic here on Karavansara. Continue reading
In these hot, humid nights, I’ve gone back to China Beach, the 1988-1991 TV series reated by William Broyles Jr. and John Sacret Young, and with Homicide, Life on the Streets, up there at the very top of the Olympus of my favorite TV shows.
It’s the day of the 
What with the death of Elsa Martinelli and all that, I went and re-watched Howard Hawks’ Hatari!, a movie shot in 1962, partially in Africa, and scripted by the great Leigh Brackett, featuring John Wayne, Red Buttons, Hardy Kruger and the above-mentioned Elsa Martinelli.
Karavansara 