Laurie's Classic Movies Blog

Elizabeth Taylor has reportedly left the hospital, and is home and resting comfortably - even planning trips to Europe and Hawaii. Good for her.

The news follows some apparently overstated reports that the 76-year-old actress was gravely ill and on life support.

The whole episode inspired me to look up a time many years ago when she checked into a different kind of hospital -- General Hospital. In these outtakes, she seems to be having a tough time remembering her husband's name. Who can blame her? Poor thing was married eight times, after all.

La Liz at her diamond jubilee birthday in Vegas, showing some bling/by Ethan Miller, Getty Images

I hesitated to write about this, since I don't really know the answer, but I guess even the question is fun.

Did Alfred Hitchcock make one of his famous cameos in drag in North by Northwest? Check out this frame grab in London's Telegraph. The idea has gotten some media traction in Britian and India, less so on this side of the pond.

I've seen the film many, many times, and it crossed my mind years ago that she did look a bit like the Master of Suspense, but I thought she looked much smaller. Of course, Hitchcock's quirky, dark humor and fascination with homosexual subtext has been much discussed, and there's more than one story of his dressing in drag to amuse party guests. Still, I think we'd have heard about this by now if it were true. Maybe it's J. Edgar Hoover.

Most commenters seem to think it's Jesslyn Fax, a character actreess who had a long career in TV and movies, and a role Hitchcock's Rear Window. I'll leave it to smarter people with better eyes, facts and/or technical equipment to figure it out. Meanwhile, the actual movie always bears repeat viewings!

Good grief, where has this summer gone?

There's only ten more days of Turner Classic Movies' fabulous "Summer Under the Stars" feature. That's when they run 24 straight hours of a single star's movies, every day in August.

Coming up tomorrow is the hot, hot, hot Ava Gardner, with Trevor Howard on the 22nd (don't miss The Third Man.)

Then on the Saturday the 23rd it's 24 hours of the great old comedy team, Laurel and Hardy, followed by a Henry Fonda marathon on Sunday the 24th. (My picks from the Fonda line-up there would be 12 Angry Men, and Jezebel.)

So many great movies, so little time.

Laurel and Hardy impersonators at a DVD release event in London/by Steve Finn, Getty Images

All you fans of the Austin Powers movies will want to check this out: MGM plans to re-release 1967's bizarre Casino Royale, a fun, if dated spy spoof with an incredible cast: David Niven as James Bond, Peter Sellers, Orson Welles as a villainous mastermind, Ursula Andress as eye candy and a young Woody Allen as a nerdy mad scientist -not to mention Deborah Kerr, John Huston, George Raft, Charles Boyer, William Holden and Burt Bachrach. Whew!

Actually, the movie is a bit of a mess. Like many films in the psychedelic era, it's chaotic and sometimes hard to follow. But it's great fun to watch as an early satire of the hyper-successful 007 movies, and the direct ancestor of Mike Myers' spy comedies. It's uneven, often witty and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. Watch for it in October, with lots of new features.

Yet another remake on the horizon: A new take on My Fair Lady, the wildly successful 1963 film of the wildly popular stage musical.

The good news: they're sticking with the superb Lerner and Lowe score, and witty, talented actress/writer Emma Thompson will work on the screenplay.

I guess we won't know until the movie comes out whether there is any bad news, although I always fret about remakes. According to Playbill, the idea is to make it less of a straight-on, stagy film version of the Broadway musical, but more of a period piece bringing Edwardian England to life, and injecting more of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, the play that inspired the musical.

Hard to imagine anything that approaches the charm of Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison in the original movie, but I wish them well. Just you wait, 'enry 'iggins, just you wait...

After a flurry of reports in England that classic movie actress Elizabeth Taylor was on life support in a Los Angeles hospital, her publicist has denied the rumors and says that the actress is in fact hospitalized, but doing well and about to go home soon.

The violet-eyed legend is 76 years old, and has been experiencing health problems. But she's also been out and about in Hollywood in recent months. Her spokesman says she's surrounded by family, friends and fabulous jewels, just as it should be.

Dame Elizabeth at an AIDS benefit in LA in December, 2007/by Kevin Winter, Getty Images

Set your TiVo. Turner Classic Movies starts off its "Summer Under the Stars" on August 1 with a night of Michael Caine. Love him. I'm up for Alfie, A Bridge Too Far, and of course, Sleuth. (I ruined Sleuth for everybody the first time I saw it by blurting out the gimmick when I figured it out. Oops.)

I still love Sleuth so much so much I haven't brought myself around to watching the 2007 remake, even though it has Caine in it too.

The rest of the week brings us Gregory Peck (Boys form Brazil), Marie Dressler, Charlie Chaplin (Gold Rush, City Lights, The Great Dictator), Claude Rains, Anne Bancroft, and the always watchable James Garner, who perfected the art of weary screen virility long before Harrison Ford and Tom Selleck came along. ("Oh, damn, I have to go be manly again...")

Caine as the irresistible, irredeemable rake in 'Alfie'/courtesy Turner Classic Movies

The old Rat Pack classic Robin and the Seven Hoods will get the Broadway treatment in a big new musical...but we're going to have to wait until 2010 to see it.

Set in Chicago during Prohibition with Rat Pack regulars Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr., the classic movie features Sinatra singing My Kind of Town and Come Fly With Me. Could be a winner.

Let's hope it does better than this spring's version of Gone With the Wind on the London stage. The $8 million musical flop closed three weeks early to scathing reviews. Plans to bring it to Broadway appear to be on hold, thank goodness.

Variety reports that a remake of Captain Blood may be afoot, with Phillip Noyce at the helm.

I guess if you can strike box office gold with a movie based on a Disney theme ride like Pirates of the Caribbean, why not try to do the same with an actual classic movie?

Errol Flynn famously assayed the role of the good doctor turned pirate in the 1935 original. Who do you suppose they'll try for this time around? Johnny Depp? Or a more mainstream boy toy?

Some day soon, happy tourists will be looking for their favorite star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, and they'll find a bottle of vodka.

No, not a bottle dropped by a sidewalk drunk. This will be a "star" commemorating a generous donation from the Absolut vodka company to restore the actual stars, which are deteriorating rapidly.

Sports stadiums, kid's playgrounds, movie theaters, symphony halls. I guess everything used to be named after rich people. Now, it's international conglomerates. Soon, everything in this nation will have the name of some corporation stamped onto it, hanging over it in neon, embedded in its sidewalk, or otherwise advertising its sponsor.

I wonder if they'll pay me extra if I get an About.com tattoo?

Absolut tribute/by Valerie Macon, Getty Images