The Best Old Movies for Families: A Guide to Watching Together

Read an Excerpt

Introduction
If a child can watch Barney, can't that same child also enjoy watching Charlie Chaplin or the Marx Brothers? And as they get older, wouldn't they grow to like screwball comedies (His Girl Friday), women's weepies (Imitation of Life), and westerns

Introduction : Part 2
I guess you could lock them in the attic. A better solution might be to vary their media diet, and one way to do that is with old movies. I don't mean Grease or Star Wars. I mean old movies. The kind in black and white or Crayola-surreal Technicolor

Author Q&A
Q: After working as a film critic for over a decade, why did you write this book now? A: Very simply, I wanted to watch something with my children that we could all enjoy on the same level at the same time.

If a child can watch Barney, can't that same child also enjoy watching Charlie Chaplin or the Marx Brothers? And as they get older, wouldn't they grow to like screwball comedies (His Girl Friday), women's weepies (Imitation of Life), and westerns (The Searchers)? The answer is that they'll follow because they'll have learned that "old" does not necessarily mean "next channel, please."

Here is an impassioned and eminently readable guide that introduces the delights of the golden age of movies. Ty Burr has come up with a winning prescription for children brought up on Hollywood junk food.

Ty Burr is a film critic for The Boston Globe. For eleven years prior, he worked for Entertainment Weekly as the magazine's chief video critic and also covered movies, books, theater, music, and the Internet.

He began his career at Home Box Office as an in-house "film evaluator." While at Entertainment Weekly, Burr wrote The Hundred Greatest Movies of All Time and coauthored The Hundred Greatest Stars of All Time.

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