we have the stars

Eartha Kitt and her rambunctious "Kitt-cat" at home on Riverside Drive in New York during Eartha's interview with veteran news journalist Edward R. Murrow on the television program Person to Person, originally broadcast live by CBS on September 10th, 1954. While setting up their heavy lights and camera equipment (which included a large transmitter placed on the building's flat rooftop, shown below), the CBS crew accidentally caused a large section of Eartha's recently installed ceiling to plummet to the floor shortly before the broadcast went live, hence the cat's edginess and Eartha's soothing cuddles while she tried to help calm her frightened kitty.

A good love scene should be about something else besides love.

"Lord, you sure knew what you were doing when you brung me to this very cell at this very time. A man with ten thousand dollars his somewhere, and a widder in the makin´ ."

The Night of the Hunter (1955)

Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950) is probably the most movie-besotted movie of all time. Start with the premise. Gloria Swanson, a silent-film star whose career was derailed by the talkies, is Norma Desmond, a silent-film star whose career was ended by the talkies. Her butler-chauffeur, Max, turns out to be a once-acclaimed silent-film director and Norma’s ex-husband. He’s creepily–and brilliantly–played by Erich von Stroheim, a once-acclaimed silent-film director who’d been reduced to playing character parts, mostly Nazis in World War II-pictures.

The most meta scene comes shortly after screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) takes up residence in Norma’s decrepit mansion, where he serves as a combination amanuensis/boy toy. He tells us that Norma throws regular movie nights, just for the two of them; Max is projectionist. The repertoire, of course, is her own films. We see a bit from one of them, a scene where the young Norma’s face is illuminated by candles.