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Ninotchka (1939)

Ninotchka and Leon (Garbo and Douglas) cracking up. DP: William H. Daniels.

July 1: a joke for #InternationalJokeDay

Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939)

Garbo laughs!

The great Garbo was known for her beauty, her coolness, her tragedy, for a lot but her laughter. So typecast she became that the tagline for Ninotchka (1939) – Garbo laughs! – is a #joke in itself.

Penned by the great Billy Wilder, the Ernst Lubitsch directed comedy unexpectedly temporarily revived #Garbo's career, who by the time 1938 came around had become box office poison. And the joke? Well…

A man comes into a restaurant. He sits down at the table and he says, “Waiter, bring me a cup of coffee without cream.” Five minutes later, the waiter comes back and says, “I'm sorry, sir, we have no cream. Can it be without milk?”

#Bales2023FilmChallenge #ErnstLubitsch #BillyWilder #GretaGarbo #MelvynDouglas #WernerRHeymann #WilliamHDaniels #comedy #communism #romance #USA #1930s

#todo

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Grand Hotel (Edmund Goulding, 1932)

Jan

8

World Typing Day

Despite Flaemmchen – Joan Crawford in her breakout role – is introduced as a “little stenographess”, that's clearly a typewriter on her desk. DP: William H. Daniels.

“Grand Hotel… always the same. People come, people go. Nothing ever happens.”

– Flaemmchen

#Bales2023FilmChallenge #WorldTypingDay #EdmundGoulding #VickiBaum #GretaGarbo #JohnBarrymore #JoanCrawford #LionelBarrymore #CharlesMaxwell #WilliamHDaniels #BookAdaptation #typewriters #PreCode #USA #1930s