On this week's Warner Bros. 1934 Studios Year by Year episode, we look at some of the studio's mid-30s B-output: the jazzy, Modernist, montage-ist, telephonic I've Got Your Number, starring Pat O'Brien as an insouciant and sometimes insolent Everyman (in a comedy team-up we never knew we needed with fuming mentor Eugene Pallette) whose redemption arc is sparked by beleaguered working girl Joan Blondell; and I Am a Thief, with Mary Astor and Ricardo Cortez playing hot potato with the title's claim. Do either of these films qualify as "termite art"? Do both? Listen and learn!

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: 1934 & Warner Brothers

0h 03m 17s: I'VE GOT YOUR NUMBER [dir. Ray Enright]

0h 26m 41s: I AM A THIEF [dir. Robert Florey]

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Warner Brothers Story by Clive Hirschhorn

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

1934 Information from Forgotten Films to Remember by John Springer

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* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave's new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

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Our Special Subject for this month is The Archers in Black and White: A Canterbury Tale (1944), I Know Where I'm Going! (1945), and The Small Back Room (1949). We discuss Powell and Pressburger's interest in the claims and sins of tradition and modernity, their handling of intense romantic relationships, and their search for transcendence in nature and the past. Then, in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we briefly discuss the films we saw at the 2026 Toronto Silent Film Festival, including the 1926 Beau Geste with Ronald Colman, Chaplin's The Kid (1921), Garbo and Gilbert in (Edmund Goulding's) Love (1927), Eisenstein's nightmarish Strike (1925), and Lewis' Milestone's romantic comedy The Garden of Eden (1928).

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: A CANTERBURY TALE (1944) [dirs.. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger]

0h 26m 31s: I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING (1945) [dirs.. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger]

0h 42m 28s: THE SMALL BACK ROOM (1949) [dirs.. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger]

0h 58m 31s: Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – 2026 Toronto Silent Film Festival – Herbert Brenon's Beau Geste (1926), Charlie Chaplin's The Kid (1921), Edmund Goulding's Love (1927), Sergei Eisenstein's Strike! (1925) and Lewis Milestone's The Garden of Eden (1928); also: Laurel and Hardy in Brats (1930), Baby Peggy in Peg o' the Mounted (1924) and the Lumière Brothers' Aroseur et arosée (1896)

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again"

* Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

We conclude our Deborah Kerr Acteurist Spotlight with a couple of her big Hollywood movies after the turning point of From Here to Eternity: Vincente Minnelli's Tea and Sympathy (1956), in which she appears as Laura Reynolds, a role she originated on Broadway; and Henry King's Beloved Infidel (1959), in which she stars as Hollywood gossip columnist Sheilah Graham in an autobiographical account of a fascinating rags-to-modest-wealth-and-influence story intersecting with F. Scott Fitzgerald's final years of alcoholic decline and exile in Hollywood. We discuss Minnelli and playwright/screenwriter Robert Anderson's very contemporary-feeling analysis of the performance of gender (masculinity in particular) and Kerr's role as a Sex Christ, and Beloved Infidel's good-bad-and-ugly, but empathetic, approach to a troubled, abusive relationship.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: TEA AND SYMPATHY (1956) [dir. Vincente Minnelli]

0h 33m 45s: BELOVED INFIDEL (1959) [dir. Henry King]

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again"

* Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!