Cliff Froehlich

A recovering journalist—the former executive editor of the St. Louis alt-weekly The Riverfront Times and arts-and-entertainment editor of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch—Cliff Froehlich is executive director of the nonprofit Cinema St. Louis and a particular sucker for cats.

Posts by Cliff Froehlich

Animal House

Shuffling through the vaccination and microchip records, reading the myriad names, I sometimes smile with nostalgic fondness, but more often my eyes mist as I am reminded of the multitudes we have loved but lost.

An Old Couple’s Search for Dignity

No one—in either real or reel life—wants to confront the difficulties of aging, the imminence of dying. The point is best proved by Leo McCarey’s glorious Make Way for Tomorrow (1937), the most unbearably moving and resolutely unsparing work Hollywood has ever made about the elderly.

Days of Wrath

The Joads and their fellow Oakies may be today’s Orange County conservatives, but the labor struggles and political tensions made real in the pages of Steinbeck’s most famous book resonate 75 years later, and counting.