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(Outrageous in the sense of being larger-than-life, caring primarily about their own needs to the exclusion of others, and not worrying whether their behavior is appropriate): Marie Dressler in Dinner at Eight (1933) Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard (1950) Robert Walker in Strangers on a Train (1951) Jean Hagen in Singin' in the Rain (1952) Hans Conried in The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953) Andy Griffith in A Face in the Crowd (1957) Peter O'Toole in My Favorite Year (1982) Bette Midler in Ruthless People (1986) Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda (1988) Dianne Wiest in Bullets Over Broadway (1994)

The Producers--Zero Mostel (and Dick Shawn and Kenneth Mars..) Barefoot in the Park--Charles Boyer Gypsy--Rosalind Russell Pink Flamingos--Devine Incendiary Blonde--Betty Hutton Twentieth Century--John Barrymore The Abominable Dr. Phibes--Vincent Price Murder, He Says--the whole Fleagle family Soapdish--Cathy Moriarty What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?--Bette Davis known for their outrageous characters: Groucho Marx Mae West

Wanted to follow up... I settled on Psycho and The Birds and my friend said he enjoyed both. Hopefully that will help him gain interest in seeing others.

No, actually speedy, Conte's character didn't turn her into the police. If you recall, George Reeves' cop character was tipped-off to the fact that Conte was meeting her again at that little diner by the bartender there. This was shown in a manner in which it appeared to be a total surprise to Conte. (...Reeves even thanked the bartender for doing it as he and his fellow police officers lead Norah away, and with Conte ending up looking dumbfounded at what had just transpired as that scene fades out)

Lana Turner as Cora Smith in The Postman Always Rings Twice Orson Welles as Harry Lime in The Third Man Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates in Psycho Louis de Funès as Ludovic Cruchot in The Gendarme of St. Tropez Malcolm McDowell as Alex in A Clockwork Orange Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver Jack Nicholson as R. P. McMurphy in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest Robert De Niro as Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy Sharon Stone as Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct Jennifer Jason Leigh as Hedra Carlson in Single White Female

I think any sci-fi space film that shows alien women as sexy with dolled-up hair and mini-skirt outfits would be totally changed. The Queen of Outer Space (1958) comes to mind, where the male space cadets only seem concerned with making out with the women of Venus while Earth is about to be destroyed. Barbarella is a film that I would personally love to not re-make but to make something similar to- in the vain of sci-fi pin-up pulp.

TCM is showing a movie tonight at 11:30 that would qualify perfectly for inclusion in the movies of summer thread. It's a rare (although TCM did show it a few years back) opportunity to see the almost completely forgotten Look in Any Window (1961). Set in a California suburban neighborhood during a summer heat wave, circa 1960, it stars superstar at the time teen idol Paul Anka in a dramatic role as an unsure of himself teen who takes to peeping-tomming his neighbors. I first saw this at the age of about 14 or 15, in summer, on the late show, and then never again. It seemed to disappear from the face of the earth - a long lost artifact of the early 60's.

and they LEFT STUFF OUT!!!!!

The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942) Auntie Mame (1958)

1944 - Between Two Worlds Next: Ray Milland manipulates Ann Todd into becoming his willing accomplice in an evil scheme.

THE COURT JESTER (1956) f next: lots of glib patter

Actually, The Birds has PLENTY of "MacGuffins" in it, James. Uh-huh! There's a whole flock of 'em in that flick! Yep, if ya look real close you can spot both the Yellow-Bellied MacGuffin AND the Crested Blue-Throated MacGuffin peckin' at people throughout this movie! Well, starting at about halfway through it, anyway. (...evidently you're not into Ornithology at all, huh)

Rebecca is a great film to be sure, BUT I can not believe that there would be that many Millennials who would go gaga over any movie that's as ladened with the amount of dialogue in it as it has, and to say nothing about the little amount of action scenes in it. C'mon now, YOU know how these kids are today, don't YA?! Too much talk and not enough action is pretty much anathema to 'em. (...and thus the reason I say start the youngins out watching something by Hitch with some action in it...yep, NBNW would be the one I'd choose to sit their little uninitiated butts in front of first!)

Harris, Mel

Millard Mitchell

His mistake may have been moving to Vancouver, had he moved east out around Kamloops or Salmon Arm he'd have fit right in. In fact he'd probably have been elected Supreme Overlord.

Maybe they could retitle it INVASION OF THE TRANSGENDER GIRLS. Would that work for you?

It takes someone pretty “special” to test the patience and politeness of the Canadians. [...But I think Randy qualifies. ]

The Birds has one big macguffin the first half hour--I was watching one first-time YouTube reactor, who was spending the first twenty minutes saying, "Wait, so is this like, a romance, and we're following Tippi Hendren romantically stalking Rod Taylor?" Fortunately, he'd already seen Psycho, and knew that that movie wasn't really about Janet Leigh on the run with stolen money.

Aren't missing a thing!

I tend to agree with those who think The Birds would probably appeal to younger viewers - if they have the patience to sit through the first part. Hitchcock builds his film slowly and all that early stuff involving the pet store and Tippi taking some love birds out to Rod, well, I'm not certain that many younger viewers wouldn't start yawning during that lengthy sequence and looking elsewhere for their entertainment. After all, Big Brother might be playing on another channel.

Twilight For the Gods (1958) was even better than I remembered, so I hope people got to see it. It's one of those every-passenger-has-a-backstory tales set on a leaky boat in the Pacific Ocean, but a good one with some interesting characters. Cyd had basically been a prostitute, though for 1950's purposes it was framed as an "escort" who sometimes went "above and beyond". She was, as usual, cool under pressure and was one of Rock's better romantic partners. (Jean Simmons was also a good partner for Rock in This Earth is Mine, another little-seen Universal drama.) I'm not sure whether this was a TCM premiere, but they haven't shown it in all the years I've been watching. I caught it back in the day (in pan-and-scan) on AMC, which favored Universal films heavily, so seeing the great widescreen print TCM showed the other night was a treat.

As much as I love NBNW and even though I've strived (striven?...tried!) to be all things Cary Grant in my life, I've got to go with James on this one Dargo. In a society that's reared them to believe there are no winners or losers, failure is only a state of mind, and it's okay to be a sixth year high school senior, I can't see more than one youngster out of...oh say fifty being able to comprehend the plot of North beyond the drunken stupor driving scene which would be both totally ****in' and disappointing since it only happens once. I mean c'mon, these are the same ones who puzzle over the storyline in last Sunday's Garfield. I can see them getting into the Birds however with it's scene of Dan propped against the wall, eyes pecked out. Tell me you can't hear their high pitched squeal of delight! Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to write an angry letter to the editor complaining about traffic lights and then go yell at kids on bikes to stay off my lawn.

Oh yes, she couldn't have made up her word without knowing schadenfreude. I was helping move it along.

What is gained is he IS honest with her, which is important. He sets her free. He doesn't want her to keep on expecting him to come back and marry her. I think they were engaged, he's not just a boyfriend. So he owes it to her to let her know he's met someone else he'd rather marry and is breaking the engagement. If he hadn't written her and let her know that, she'd be wasting her time waiting for him to return to her and marry her, which was never going to happen. I don't actually think he was a cad. The film suggests they were engaged because they'd known each other since they were kids, maybe they just assumed they should get married. Maybe he'd never dated anyone else. He met someone else, fell for her, and that was that. Stuff happens.

Friday, June 25/26 2:15 a.m. Lunatics: A Love Story (1991). Underground film with Bill Campbell

Did I say that? I woke up at one point and saw a complete maelstrom of naked bodies, Daltry singing, chopsticks on the piano and decided I may as well go to bed - my nightmares were more coherent.

No problem! Let's extend it past the 4th of July.

The Grass Is Greener (1960) An American invades an English country home with the intention of carrying off the lady of the house. Cary Grant as a house husband! I believe that is all that you should need to know to compel you to watch this movie. It is a comedy of manners directed by: Stanley Donen. It is of an age and society when gentlemen invited their wife's lover to the country for a weekend. It is therefore filled with gentle humor and innocent-seeming banter with the audience in on the joke. Robert Mitchum as the interloper seems to me to be a bit miscast but he presents well. Deborah Kerr is the wife in question and Jean Simmons rounds out the cast as her friend who is a little minx. There are no car chases, no explosions except a wife blowing up at her husband and it is quite late in the movie before anyone is shot. 8.6/10 It is currently in the: Paramount+ stable of movies available for streaming on their app/site.

Jeanne Cooper Next: ONE NIGHT IN THE TROPICS (1940)

Yep NS, there's Parks' "Long Lonesome Highway" song that you hear him singing during the closing credits of this series. (...as you may remember, it actually broke into the Top-40 Pop chart and got a pretty good amount of radio airplay for a while during the time of this short-lived series' run)

1952--The Star Next: John Garfield, Paul Henreid, and Eleanor Parker take an otherworldly boat trip

I enjoyed that film too, having spent many an hour in record stores helped. JOHN CUSACK's movies are like that; they sneak up on you and become absorbing.

Dominic Frontiere, composer of the awesome soundtrack for ON ANY SUNDAY, had earlier set music to a traction in the dirt theme:

It's nice to see character actors and folks who typically were supporting players get a day.

I think you're correct that it was the first dramatic series to do so, as it had a continuing story line from week to week (unusual at the time, except for the prime time soaps like Peyton Place). Since most shows' episodes of that era were self-contained rather than continuing from week to week, I suppose they felt there was no need to do a wrap-up at the end. Of course, a lot of series were cancelled after they had wrapped for a season, so they didn't know it was ending until it was too late. By the 60s, most shows were down to fewer than 30 episodes a season, and they would finish taping/filming in the early spring, and networks often didn't settle their fall schedules until late spring (usually May). Shows didn't always go out on their own terms. Leave it to Beaver had a final episode, which consisted of the family looking through a photo album that was realized by using flashbacks to previous episodes. I don't recall there being any "big moment" like the family moving or Ward losing his job (whatever that was) or some other device to bring things to an end. Mary Tyler Moore and The Bob Newhart Show both had episodes that terminated the basic premise of the shows (MTM: most of the WJM-TV personnel getting fired; Newhart: Bob closing his practice, taking a teaching job and moving away from Chicago). Of course, Newhart's 2nd CBS series had the famous final episode that pointed back to the first show. After these two, it became more common for a series to have some sort of finale.

I think that that's just a plot point that one has to take at face value. I know it does seem incongruous that a guy as bright as Conte's character was in this film wouldn't or couldn't immediately figure out that the ol' "It's my friend" line wasn't true, but without him at first believing it, then the later scene we've been talking about and where Sothern enlightens him would have had to have been rewritten a bit.

Really love this film. And, Eleanor Powell really shines in it, too.

No, and because just before Norah was arrested at the diner in that scene, it was establisted that Conte had learned that it was indeed Norah who was the prime suspect the police were looking for. (...remember when he first arrived there he walked to up to Ann Sothern who was seated in that booth, and it's she who informs him that it was Norah who is the prime suspect and to who Sothern then points to sitting at the next booth over from her)

I think you're forgetting the final episode of another and slightly earlier series here, Magoo. Uh-huh, the one for Naked City, and where the producers and with a tip of the cap to this series' title, had all the actors playing cops in NYC's 65th Precinct performing nude. They were all seated behind their desks though, and so any action scenes were nonexistant in this one. Nope, no chasing down any perps on the mean steets of New York in this one. Now, word is actor Harry Bellaver balked at this at first, but it's said once he got into the spirit of things, he found it a very liberating experience. (...actually, you might be right, Magoo...I can't recall any previous series to The Fugitive doing a finale...good question)

My top five favourite Hitchcock films, in no particular order, are: The Wrong Man, I Confess, Shadow of a Doubt, Lifeboat and Frenzy. I don't think you can go too far wrong by showing any of those to someone who is new to Hitchcock / classic movies. There's nothing inherently wrong with North by Northwest, Rear Window, Foreign Correspondent, The Lady Vanishes and most other genuine classics Hitchcock directed, but I guess I just didn't respond those ones quite as much. As for Vertigo and Psycho, I've seen both films repeatedly and have never understood what the fuss is about.

My favorite Hitchcock movies in descending order are: 1. Psycho 2. The Birds 3. Strangers on a Train 4. Rope

Do the Germans have a word for the sheer delight that comes from someone whom you DESPISED suddenly not being in your life at all anymore? They should. Drumpfenfraude?

I got tired of the Dr. Loveless character, but I liked Michael Dunn . I remember reading about all the medical problems he had due to his condition. They went far beyond what a lay person could imagine. The WWW would occasionally throw a wink at old movies. Today there was an episode which duplicated the close up shot of Welles' mouth when he says Rosebud, except the character says a different word. Anyone who has seen Citizen Kane would recognize it. It was the one where the villain was trying to take over Mexico and thought himself another Napoleon. J.D. Cannon played the villain.

I like the idea of a whole day of Margaret Rutherford. Most of these are pretty expected names though. I just hope they can get Paramount to loan out no Way to Treat a Lady for George Segal's day....

MOON OVER MIAMI (1942)

A PATCH OF BLUE (1965)