PUTZ, Michael B. Druxman's two-character comedy, explores the vicissitudes of the father & son relationship. Alan Nathan is a twice-divorced Jewish screenwriter who can't understand why his beloved son, Marty, is suddenly causing him problems. Not only has the high school senior begun criticizing Alan's self-indulgent lifestyle, but he's now decided to quit school and go on the road as a rock musician. "If only he had lived with me all these years," Alan bemoans, "instead of his mother, my son's head wouldn't be so screwed up." Tragedy strikes. Alan gets his wish. The boy moves in, and it's a...

What if you hated your next door neighbor...and he has just been elected President of the United States? In Michael B. Druxman's outrageous comedy, HAIL ON THE CHIEF , cantankerous gentleman rancher Oliver Pettridge hates his neighbor, a former cowboy movie star. He's hated him for years over a property line dispute. As the play begins, the neighbor has just been elected President of the United States. Now, Oliver must deal with all the inconveniences that anyone living next to the President must endure...including a paranoid Secret Service Agent. After the agent "bugs" Oliver's house,...

Nelson Eddy was a tall, handsome baritone from the opera and concert stage. Jeanette MacDonald was a beautiful redhead, a soprano who began her career in a Broadway chorus, then was drafted to Hollywood when the movies started to "talk" and sing. Together at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, they were "America's Singing Sweethearts," starring in a series of classic musicals that endeared them to audiences during the 1930s and decades beyond. NAUGHTY MARIETTA, ROSE MARIE, MAYTIME, SWEETHEARTS and NEW MOON are among the films that their legions of fans enjoy to this day. Off-screen, however, the...

To the average moviegoer, the name of Basil Rathbone conjures an image of fiction's most famous detective - Sherlock Holmes. Certainly, of all the actors who have played the Baker Street sleuth, his interpretation was the most definitive. Yet, for the true aficionado of the cinema, the actor was much more than the personification of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's creation. He was also Mr. Murdstone in DAVID COPPERFIELD, Richard III in TOWER OF LONDON, Louis XI in IF I WERE KING, Tybalt of ROMEO AND JULIET, Captain Estaban Pasquale in THE MARK OF ZORRO, Sir Guy of Gisbourne from THE ADVENTURES OF...

On September 14, 1951, the front page of virtually every major newspaper in the United States carried the story of how B picture actor Tom Neal had brutally beaten dapper leading man Franchot Tone's face into a bloody pulp over the affections of sultry blonde actress Barbara Payton. The sordid narrative surrounding this ill-fated triangle would have "legs." Only Franchot Tone's career would survive the disgraceful events. Barbara Payton would soon descend into a desperate world of drugs and prostitution and, in the 1960s, Tom Neal would be prosecuted for first degree murder. B MOVIE...

With Boris Karloff having abandoned the genre for Broadway, the last of the cinema's great horror stars - Lon Chaney, Jr., Bela Lugosi and John Carradine - gathered together in 1956 to appear in what would be a final gesture to the classic fright films of the 1930s and 40s, a low budget effort, THE BLACK SLEEP. Between them, these three icons had played Count Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, the Mummy and The Wolf Man, as well as a collection of mad scientists and their victims. Now, as this trio waits on the set to act out their brief, secondary roles, old resentments, personal...

Edward G. Robinson (LITTLE CAESAR) and George Raft (SCARFACE) were two of the screen's premier "tough guys." Aside from their movie personas, they had little else in common. Robinson was educated; a man of culture who collected fine art. Raft, who skipped school whenever possible, grew up on the streets of Hell's Kitchen. His interests were boxing, the racetrack, baseball and women. The actors only worked together twice. The first occasion was for the film MANPOWER (1941), and they did not get along. A scandalous photograph of their fistfight on the set appeared in newspapers throughout the...