JEAN GABIN COOKIE JAR!

This posting is pretty brief, but I couldn't resist:

Two of this author's favorite things in the world, in no particular order, are 1.) Jean Gabin and 2.) cookies.

Imagine my surprise when I checked out French eBay today and found that one can actually buy a Jean Gabin cookie jar! Lift off his beret and grab a handful of double-stuff Oreos!

"On n'a jamais assez des cookies!" ("One never has enough cookies!")

www.jeangabinbook.com

UCLA Daily Bruin Profiles WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: JEAN GABIN Today

Charles Zigman, author of WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN, VOLUMES ONE AND TWO is a proud alumnus of UCLA.

Today's UCLA Daily Bruin features a profile of the book by reporter Josh Wasbin. Here's the link:


http://www.dailybruin.com/news/2008/jul/21/new-book-examines-actor-jean-gabin/

Jean Gabin and UCLA: World's Coolest Movie Star. World's Coolest University!

TODAY'S THE DAY -- JULY 20TH: OFFICIAL RELEASE DATE OF WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN, VOLUMES 1 AND 2

July 20, 2008

Today's the day:

It's the official release date of WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN, VOLUMES ONE AND TWO

by Charles Zigman.

You should be able to find it not only on Amazon.com, but Barnes and Noble. You can also ask your local bookseller and he or she will be glad to order you a copy.

The website for the book is...

http://www.jeangabinbook.com/

... and that website not only links to this blog, but there's an "international customers" section that links up to 15 additional countries where you can buy this book -- France, Canada, UK<>

Jean Gabin: The Movie Star So Cool, It Takes Two Books to Tell His Story!

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JOSEPHINE BAKER, JEAN GABIN'S CO-STAR IN "ZOU-ZOU" (1934) HONORED WITH U.S. POSTAGE STAMP

Josephine Baker, the legendary American performer who starred opposite Jean Gabin in a great French film, 1934's "Zou-zou," was honored in her home country yesterday with her very own postage stamp!

FROM ASSOCIATED PRESS:

New US postage stamps honor early black cinema
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID – 1 day ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — Josephine Baker looks straight at you with bright eyes and shining smile, fearless and demanding attention.
The time is 1935, and the St. Louis native who transfixed France and much of Europe with song and dance stares out from a poster advertising the film "Princess Tam-Tam." Baker starred as a simple African woman presented to Paris society as royalty.

Baker's movie is one of five recalled on a set of U.S. postage stamps being released Wednesday to honor vintage black cinema. Ceremonies marking the sale of the stamps will be held at the Newark Museum in New Jersey, which is holding a black film festival.
"So many things happened in her life that she had never expected," her son Jean-Claude Baker said Tuesday.

"I guess that if she was with us today she would be very honored. At her death she was a French citizen, but she never forgot she was born in America," he said in a telephone interview. "She would be delighted and very moved."
"Despite all the difficulty of colored people in her time, she triumphed over all the adversity that she and her people had to endure," he added.
Another poster, for a 1921 release, provides a taste of the racial divide that sent the young Baker to Europe to pursue her career.

"The Sport of the Gods," the poster proclaims, is based on a book by Paul Laurence Dunbar, "America's greatest race poet," and it adds that the film has "an all-star cast of colored artists."
Other posters in the set of 42-cent stamps are:
_ "Black and Tan," a 19-minute film released in 1929 featuring Duke Ellington and his Cotton Club Orchestra.
_ "Caldonia," another short at 18 minutes, which was released in 1945. It showcased singer, saxophonist and bandleader Louis Jordan.
_ "Hallelujah," a 1929 movie released by MGM. It was one of the first films from a major studio to feature an all-black cast. Producer-director King Vidor was nominated for an Academy Award for his attempt to portray rural African-American life, especially religious experience.
In addition to Jean-Claude Baker and his brother, Jarry, the ceremony was scheduled to include Louis Jordan's widow, Martha Jordan; Paul Ellington, grandson of Duke Ellington; Newark Mayor Cory A. Booker; and Gloria Hopkins Buck, chairwoman of the film festival.

Josephine Baker may be best remembered in the United States for her singing and dancing in Europe, but she also earned military honors as an undercover agent for the French resistance in World War II. Later, she was active in civil rights work and appeared with Martin Luther King Jr. at the March on Washington in 1963.

http://www.jeangabinbook.com/

Happy Bastille Day from JeanGabinBook.com!

Yesterday, July 14th, was Bastille Day -- the French 4th of July.

From Wikipedia:

Bastille Day is the French national holiday, celebrated on 14 July each year. In France, it is called Fête Nationale ("National Celebration") in official parlance, or more commonly quatorze juillet ("14 July"). It commemorates the 1790 Fête de la Fédération, held on the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789; the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille fortress-prison was seen as a symbol of the uprising of the modern French nation, and of the reconciliation of all the French inside the constitutional monarchy which preceded the First Republic, during the French Revolution.

The World's Coolest French Holiday! The World's Coolest French Movie Star! What a "Revolutionary" Combination!

(The pic, above, is Jean Gabin as arch bread-thief Jean Valjean in director Jean-Paul Le Chanois' three-hour Technicolor epic, Les Miserables [1958]. You can find it on Amazon.com.)

http://www.jeangabinbook.com/

JEAN GABIN: KING OF FRENCH FILM NOIR

When people think about Film Noir, a great group of American movies from the '40s and '50s usually comes to mind -- and so do stars like Richard Widmark; Aldo Ray; Charles McGraw; Dennis O' Keefe, etc.

But the King of French Film Noir was clearly Jean Gabin.

Gabin's pre-World War II French output, in which he plays a tragic drifter, doomed in spite of his actions, is part of a genre called Poetic Realism, which was American Film Noir's immediate predecessor; in fact, Gabin's gangster, Pepe Le Moko, is considered by film historian's to be cinema's very first Film Noir anti-hero. (Other 1930s movies in which tragic drifter Gabin is doomed include Quai des brume, La Bete humaine, and Le Jour se leve.)

But Gabin starred in a lot of great French Film Noir in the 1950s as well, films which were made concomitantly with American Film Noir.

In America, we're familiar with Touchez pas au grisbi, in which smooth gentleman-gangster is screwed over. But he's also in a lot of Film Noir:

Razzis sur la chnouf:

Leur dernier nuit:

Voici le temps des assasins:

Jean Gabin is not only the World's Coolest Movie Star -- he's also the French King of Film Noir.

www.jeangabinbook.com

JEAN GABIN/IDA LUPINO'S AMERICAN NOIR "MOONTIDE" COMES TO U.S. DVD ON 9/2/08. FILM IS PARTIALLY DIRECTED BY FRITZ LANG AND SALVADOR DALI

Jean Gabin made ninety-five movies during a career which spanned forty-six years -- between 1930 and 1976.


93 of his movies were filmed in Europe (France, mostly; a few in Italy), and in these movies, Gabin always spoke his dialogue in his native French.


But during World War II, when the Nazis invaded France, many French film professionals moved to the U.S. in order to continue their film careers -- including Jean Gabin.


Gabin starred in two great movies in America, neither of which have ever been released on American home video. The second of the two films, Universal's Impostor, is an up-to-the minute look at the Free French Army battling in the Belgian Congo (with the San Fernando Valley's Toluca Lake doubling for the Congo)!



Gabin's first American film though, Moontide, is an incredible Film Noir that's credited to director Archie Mayo, but which was also partially directed by Fritz Lang -- and additionally, it features a hypnotic "drunk" sequence that was actually helmed by Salvador Dali.

This film, alone, is really the reason that I first decided to write my book WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN. When I was a kid, family members gushed about how great this movie was -- and when I saw it for myself, I found out why. It's a great Lost American Classic, and one which, without any exaggeration, most definitely belongs in that great pantheon of Great American 1940's films which include Casablanca, Gilda, Grapes of Wrath, etc. Not a big hit in its own time, the vastly entertaining Moontide is a film which really begs to be rediscovered. And now it will:


On September 2, 2008, Moontide comes to DVD, here in the U.S., for the very first time. It's being offered in a beautifully restored version via Fox Video, and it's a must have for any Gabin Fan, or for any Film Noir lover.

The DVD features commentary by the sharp-eyed Film Noir historian Eddie Muller, and apparently, it also contains a newly-discovered original featurette about the film, which was produced in conjunction with with the film's initial 1942 release.

Jean Gabin's co-star in the film is Ida Lupino, and Fox Video will also be issuing a second Lupino thriller, the seminal Noir Roadhouse, in which she co-stars with Richard Widmark, on September 2nd, as well.


You can pre-order Moontide now, from Amazon.com.

http://www.amazon.com/Moontide-P-Sub-Jean-Gabin/dp/B001CC7PLW/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1216060867&sr=8-1



... And don't forget to buy my book WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN, VOLUME ONE and VOLUME TWO (http://www.jeangabinbook.com/).