Dinner and a Movie at Home
Making movie night special
Making movie night special
What to eat, drink, serve and snack on while watching favorite films. No more craving what they're eating on screen, dine along with them.
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| Christmas In Connecticut Barbara Stanwyck |
Take a tip from The Shop Around the Corner and You've Got Mail. Incorporate something like a flower as a tease, a prop for guests to get to know one another. What foods would you pair with your favorite films?
Make a dish with the following ingredients or the same dish you see in the movie.
Food movies may be all about the food or there may be a small part that catches the eye of foodies in the audience. After recent movies Chef and The Hundred Foot Journey whet our appetites, we're always looking for others.
You can serve something that's your own concoction but resembles what they have on screen. Make a healthy version, a kid-friendly version, etc.
Please make suggestions for additions. There are a lot that I'm forgetting and a lot of films I've yet to see. Are you planning a home or living room film festival?
The Other Sister: Olive juice means "I love you." Sounds similar and read someone's lips as it's said, looks the same as "I love you."
Drinks (don't forget many of these have non-alcoholic versions)
Champagne, or fizzy substitute, is always nice especially while watching The Great Gatsby and to sing along with Gigi.
Gigi won Best Picture Oscar in 1959, the 31st Academy Awards. It remains one of the few films to win all the awards for which it had been nominated (in four or more categories). It received nine Oscars. It's also one of only 11 Best Picture winners in the Academy's first 82 years not to receive a single acting nomination.
-- info thanks to the Academy Awards web site
Wine is served a lot. Be ready to pour when Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman sneak into the wine cellar in Notorious.
If you dare, have some on hand when you watch Arsenic and Old Lace. Present it in a sweet cut glass cruet or decanter. Elderberry wine is preferred for such parties. Do you have recommendations for film and wine pairings? Are there more movie and beer pairings?
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| Riedel Vinum Cognac/Brandy Glasses 
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Whether you're drinking brandy, iced tea, apple cider or something else, it's fun to drink along with Hitch and cool to have the glasses they're using on screen. You can often find them close to home.
While the City Sleeps, is a 1956 film noir with an impressive cast including Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, George Sanders, Howard Duff, Vincent Price, John Drew Barrymore and Ida Lupino.
George Sanders and Rhonda Fleming are seen enjoying drinks that contain what looks like an entire peach. There is a bowl of peaches on the table in front of them.
Sanders assembles the drinks beginning with what looks like glasses that contain only a whole peach. He pokes each peach several times with a fork then pours champagne over them. If they were strawberries no one would notice but a whole peach? Wow, that's a movie star for you.
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| *While the City Sleeps |
I found a vast assortment of recipes for fruit coulis. If you want something to top a cake or other dessert, you may make it warm in a saucepan, leave it thicker, chunkier.
The basis of one recipe for a Peach Coulis. Want to make your own peach bellini? Look up a recipe of your own for details and preferences.
Choose frozen or fresh peaches (pitted, peeled, coarsely chopped)
A couple tablespoons of water
In a blender purée peaches with water
Put through a fine sieve into a bowl, pressing on solids
Discard remaining solids.
Transfer to pitcher and chill until ready to serve.
You may want to add some sugar to sweeten just before serving
If you add a peach and pour the whole drink on top of that, please send us a photograph and we'll post it.
In the 1935 film Dangerous, with Franchot Tone and Bette Davis in an Oscar winning role, the gentlemen get together and have some drinks which include fruit. We can't decide if we're seeing pineapple or slices of citrus. Enjoy yourself with this one. Men so secure in themselves they drank whatever they wanted.
In Topper, Cary Grant, Constance Bennett and Roland Young enjoy a tray of Pink Ladies
In Grand Hotel, the patrons enjoy what's called a Louisiana Flip: egg, cointreau, grenadine, orange juice and rum.
Don't forget your martinis with The Thin Man movies, William Powell and Myrna Loy.
Time for some Pinky Lemonade while you're watching Duck Soup. Don't mind
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| The Crusaders' new slogan Elizabeth Thompson Repeal the 18th Amendment Prohibition 
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There's an exciting moment involving orange juice in the beginning of Notting Hill with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts.
In her honor, why not serve Shirley Temple cocktails. Mix ginger ale (or lemon/lime soda) and a splash of grenadine, garnish with a maraschino cherry. If you have a paper umbrella, it's greatly appreciated. For the guys you can call the drink the Roy Rogers.
Serve strawberry sodas to watch The Music Man and you can all pick a little, talk a little and maybe someone will "Shush" a little? Sheesh. Mastermind your own $5 milkshake like the one in Pulp Fiction.
Finally, some drinks you can prepare from your imagination.
If you're watching 1971's Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, serve your own version of a Fizzy lifting drink.
Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, offer a pan-galactic gargle blaster.
Breakfasts in Movies
Breakfast is such an amorphous term, you can have just about anything for breakfast, eat breakfast any time of day. Here's a list.
Perhaps the most often seen breakfast in 1940s-1950s movies is ham and eggs
Pancakes, hotcakes, flapjacks may be served if you're watching:
Imitation of Life 1934
Christmas in Connecticut not only serve them but prepare for a pancake flipping contest. Be ready to both offer a prize for the best flip and someone to clean up with flips go flop.
Libeled Lady: William Powell and Walter Connolly enjoy watching Myrna Loy's flapjack flipping prowess as the trio has a supper of pancakes and fresh brook trout. Yum.
In Uncle Buck, John Candy made a very large pancake
In July 1958 the first International House of Pancakes (IHOP) opened in Toluca Lake, California. I was once waiting for a bus across the street from one of these restaurants. A person dressed up like a giant pancake tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I'd had breakfast yet. Suddenly seeing a gigantic living flapjack at six-something in the morning startled me out of my wits.
It Happened One Night: Coffee and Doughnuts. A dunking lesson. Everybody dunk with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert.
Coffee on its own Notorious with Claude Rains, Ingrid Bergman and Leopoldine Konstantin (Mama Sebastian). Do you dare drink out of Hitchcock's big coffee cup?
In The Big Heat, a pot of hot coffee is used as a weapon between Lee Marvin (as Vince Stone) and Gloria Grahame (as Debby Marsh).
Coffee and brandy: Barbara Stanwyck's breakfast in Clash by Night
Henry Fonda gets coffee spilled on him in The Lady Eve
Bread, humble good bread. Thinking of food incorporated in movies, bread is probably the most prolific?
Tyrone Power and Susan Hayward in Rawhide make the best of a loaf of bread, and the big carving knife.
Enjoy some toast while watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show Honorable Mention: The annoying talking toaster on Red Dwarf
The Gold Rush, Charlie Chaplin's dance with rolls on the ends of his forks
Frankenstein, a little bread and wine between friends. That's Good. Maybe a little cheese.
Garlic bread prepared with the utmost cool in GoodFellas 1990.
From It's a Wonderful Life
George and Mary Bailey welcome the Martinis to their new home
Mary Bailey: Bread... that this house may never know hunger. Salt... that life may always have flavor.
George Bailey: And wine... that joy and prosperity may reign forever. Enter the Martini Castle.
By the way, Roger Thornhill/Cary Grant orders a Gibson. It's made with gin and vermouth, and often garnished with a pickled onion.
Fish
Brook trout is talked about and fished for in Libeled Lady (William Powell, Myrna Loy and Walter Connolly do fish. Spencer Tracy and Jean Harlow don't fish.)
Brook trout is ordered on the train in a memorable scene in North by Northwest (Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint)
In Deception Claude Rains orders up some brook trout, after he sniffs and sorts out the birds they'll have (with Bette Davis and Paul Henreid)
"My dear what are you going to have?"
"Same as usual, a lecture on eating and then whatever you decide."
Sherman Billngsley of The Stork Club shows some the hand signals used to communicate with his staff. A round of drinks, champagne for this table....
Even More Fish:
In Splash, Daryl Hannah shows Tom Hanks a whole new way to eat lobster
Rear Window, Grace Kelly brings lobster (and French fried potatoes) to James Stewart.
Big, a young again Tom Hanks isn't crazy about caviar
Peter Sellers gets a handful of caviar in The Party
Forrest Gump, Mykelti Williamson as Benjamin "Bubba" Buford teaches us different ways to prepare shrimp
Catherine O'Hara, Jeffrey Jones are pulled away from their Shrimp Cocktails in Beetlejuice for a rendition of Day-O (The Banana Boat Song) ... and there's a surprise at the end
Leave Her to Heaven codfish and salmon:
Good for sushi and cod can make a good seafood taco
Mr. Robie (Ray Collins): "I was born and raised in Boston and I yield to no one in my passion for codfish!"
Dick Harland (Cornel Wilde): "...I’m what you’d call a salmon man."
Meat
Leg of Lamb Lamb to the Slaughter Alfred Hitchcock Presents
Ham "If you ain't eatin' Wham you ain't eatin' ham!" Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House
"I'm simply wild about you. I couldn’t do without you. Corned beef and cabbage, I love you." Lines from a song in the 1934 romantic comedy Kiss and Make-Up starring Cary Grant, Helen Mack and Genevieve Tobin
In the Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night Ringo Starr is in the police station. Paul McCartney's fictional grandfather John McCartney (Wilfrid Brambell) talks to him about some of the tough guys that Ringo might encounter, They have "fists like matured hams - and if they get you on the floor watch out for your brisket."
Spam chant from Monty Python's Flying Circus
Chili or is it stew? Edward G. Robinson and Charlton Heston early in Soylent Green
Spaghetti
Lady and the Tramp
The Apartment (with tennis racket)
My Sister Eileen
A Night at the Opera
The Godfather
I Love You To Death 1990 (spiked spaghetti)
Good example of food that crosses the line between breakfast, dinner and dessert:
In Elf, Buddy prepares a breakfast consisting of spaghetti noodles topped with marshmallows, M&Ms, maple syrup and pop tarts
Eggs
Talk of the Town a fried egg obscures Cary Grant's photo from Ronald Colman
Cool Hand Luke (1967) Paul Newman eats 50 eggs.
In 1976, Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) drank down a glass of raw eggs
Edie (Divine's mother) is the Egg Lady in Pink Flamingos
A Night at the Opera 2 hard boiled eggs, make that 3 hard boiled eggs
Alfred Hitchcock once told an interviewer that he was frightened of eggs. Eggs are among the least pleasant food images in his films. In To Catch a Thief a raw egg is tossed against a window (obscuring our view of Cary Grant) and Jessie Stevens (Jessie Royce Landis) snuffs out a cigarette in a fried egg.
Sandwiches
Mr. Skeffington Claude Rains, Bette Davis George serving turkey sandwiches to jilted suitors
Five Easy Pieces Chicken sandwich hold the chicken Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda
Libeled Lady: There is something very cute about the way Myrna Loy feeds William Powell a sandwich. Can't remember why he can't hold the sandwich himself...
Topaz: Alfred Hitchcock chicken and ham sandwiches on a picnic. Good enough to get kidnapped for and more
Psycho: Sandwiches are served. Norman Bates tells Marion that she eats like a bird.
Popeye 1980 Hamburgers. Everything is food Robin Williams, Shelly Duvall, Paul Dooley.
Pulp Fiction, 1994. The Big Kahuna Burger, the Royale with cheese.
"Keene faces charges today! Wilma Laxter's fiance must undergo grilling by Burger." Newspaper headline seen in the movie, The Case of the Black Cat. It's a 1936 Perry Mason film. Ricardo Cortez is Mason, Jane Bryan is Wilma Laxter. Guy Usher is District Attorney Hamilton Burger.
Edward Scissorhands has a memorable dinner scene: bread and butter, peas and carrots, potatoes, green beans. What else?
It Happened One Night trailer; Raw carrots and hitchhiking lessons
Vegetables (Veggie platter, Crudités):
The Tomb of Ligeia: A potentially lethal cabbage, (cole slaw will do), brussels sprouts
Carrots: It Happened One Night
More Carrots: Ned "Scotty" Scott: "An intellectual carrot. The mind boggles ... Please doctor, I've got to ask this. It sounds like, well, just as though you're describing some form of super carrot." The Thing From Another World
My Favorite Wife: Randolph Scott/Stephen Burkett is a vegetarian who likes raw carrots and carrot juice
State Fair pickles & mincemeat
Lettuce Celery, Apple Soylent Green
Ketchup, Tomatoes (fruit) The Thrill of it All Doris Day, James Garner, making your own food
Frankie and Johnny Al Pacino styles a flower out of a turnip for Michelle Pfeiffer.
Dr. Dolittle 1967 Rex Harrison championed vegetarianism and even included a song, The Vegetarian
Chicken
Talk of the Town Cary Grant is given chicken to eat on his way to jail
Capon? Chicken as headwear The Party
Elizabeth Taylor consumes a chicken leg in the kitchen in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
Sliced turkey with blue candle wax shows up in The Tomb of Ligeia (may not have the right film)
Eraserhead's unpleasant wriggling chicken
Inherit the Wind 1960 Awaiting the verdict, Brady a.k.a. The Colonel (Fredric March) goes over his prepared speech while munching on a fried chicken leg
Spaghetti and Coffee for two, Little Caesar
The Soup most likely to...
Borscht with an egg in it Talk of the Town Jean Arthur, Ronald Colman, Cary Grant
Soup with a jeweled brooch in it The Killers
Fruit
"A snozzberry?! Who ever heard of a snozzberry?!" Willy Wonka & the
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| James Cagney & Mae Clarke The Public Enemy 
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The Time Machine 1960 offers bowls of what looks like a combo pear and squash.
Have your own grapefruit scene when James Cagney and Mae Clarke have theirs in Public Enemy.
Fruit Cup: In High Anxiety Nurse Diesel makes it clear that "Those who are late do not get fruit cup." The necessity and desirability of fruit cup has never been greater.
The Godfather's scaring his grandson using an orange peel over his teeth
Snacks
[Here's a tip: When we went to a friend's house to watch movies and she brought out the pop corn, she also brought out little shot glasses with toothpicks.]
Popcorn Strangers on a Train. Robert Walker as Bruno Anthony eats as he rides in the tunnel of love off to commit a murder.
Popcorn, Soda, etc Drive In Movie Scene Grease 1978
Butter (to go with that popcorn) Butter the 2011 movie w/Jennifer Garner, Ty Burrell, Olivia Wilde, Hugh Jackman
"Aw, Pretzels!," said by Kay Mildred Pierce
Saltines/crackers eaten in Lifeboat
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| Mildred Pierce High Quality Joan Crawford Butterfly McQueen,Jack Carson 
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Pie
Mildred Pierce bakes some good looking pies in her restaurant
State Fair Mincemeat w/brandy (my experience with mincemeat is in a pie)
Apple pie watching American Pie 1999
Labor Day with Kate Winslet, Josh Brolin and Gattlin Griffith. Winslet plays an expert pie maker.
More than one person has suggested serving pie while watching The Life of Pi. That's your call.
In Waitress (2007) Keri Russell/Jenna Hunterson enters a pie baking contest. This film was so serious about pie that they show a Pie Mistress in the credits.
Cake, wedding or birthday
A girl's birthday party is interrupted by The Birds
Debbie Reynolds come out of a big cake and surprises Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain
There's a huge living, singing wedding cake in The Great Ziegfeld 1936
Dessert
Floating Island Desk Set
Ice Cream cones, Audrey Hepburn's ice cream kerplunks right onto Cary Grant, messing up his suit and causing him to need a shower. Charade
The Godfather: "Leave the gun, take the cannoli." A cannoli consists of a tube-shaped shell of fried pastry dough, filled with a sweet, creamy filling.
The Other Sister: "I love you more than bands... and cookie-making!" 1999 film with Juliette Lewis, Giovanni Ribisi, Diane Keaton, Tom Skerritt and Hector Elizondo.
Notting Hill has a debate over who should have the last brownie
Ninja-bread Men Cookie Cutters
make cookies for Ninja movies, boxing films or maybe even Soylent Green? It's all up to you
make cookies for Ninja movies, boxing films or maybe even Soylent Green? It's all up to you
Candies and Gum
Don't necessarily go with the same brand name, but something similar
Caddyshack, Baby Ruth candy bar
Forrest Gump: "My momma always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."
Wizard of Oz: lollypops
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Toot Sweets (1968)
ET Reese's Pieces lined up
Miracle on 34th Street bubble gum
Dr. Strangelove General "Buck" Turgidson loved his Gum. Was he giving up smoking?
Non-Traditional Meals (Inspiration for new recipes):
Eating a shoe Charlie Chaplin Gold Rush 1925
Crumpled paper Arsenic and Old Lace
A Day at the Races Harpo eats a thermometer. He drinks poison and he blows balloons out of his mouth! Chico "He's got in-grown balloons."
Groucho/Dr. Hackenbush - "Don't drink that poison. That's four dollars an ounce."
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Joan Crawford - 8x10 Photograph High Quality
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November 15 is Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day -- Have a party and a dinner. Remember the 1939 movie The Women. When asked,
"Can I find anything in that ice box of yours?"
I think it was Joan Crawford's character Crystal who replied, "Yeah, cobwebs and a bottle of gin."
Dr. Strangelove's Survival Kit includes chewing gum.
Major T. J. "King" Kong (Slim Pickens): Survival kit contents: In them you'll find: one forty-five caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days' concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair of nylon stockings.
Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.
I've left out real foodie films, films full of food such as Like Water for Chocolate, Eat Drink Man Woman and for the most part the Willy Wonka films.
On-screen foodies in The Odd Couple, Jack Lemmon and Tony Randall cooked up fun living with roommates Walter Matthau and Jack Klugman.
Any Hitchcock movie is apt to have an eating scene that's significant. Hitchcock enjoyed playing with food scenes in his movies and apparently in real life.
Alfred Hitchcock's Blue Food Dinner Parties
Milking a Scene: 20 Famous Movie Milk Scenes
Ducks & Geese in Movies, Fowl in Film Vincent Price the actor/chef in His Kind of Woman
While The City Sleeps [Remaster]
Greta Garbo Swedish Meat Balls Recipe Card
more old Hollywood recipe cards to customize by Jakestuff
Unconventional Ingredients: Cooking Show
Iron Chef Challenges T-shirt
Put your favorite photo on t-shirt designs at zazzle.com
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