CineSage_jr
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Posts posted by CineSage_jr
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Where's Raymond Massey? Where's Walter Pidgeon?
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JOAN CRAWFORD MARATHON ON TCM
It'll take more than MGM's Make-up Department to keep old Joan from looking like hell after she's run 26.3 miles.
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There are three "Mr Belvedere" films:
SITTING PRETTY (1948)
MR BELVEDERE GOES TO COLLEGE (1949)
MR BELVEDERE RINGS THE BELL (1951).
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OLIVIA: I won two Oscars!
JOAN: But I won mine first!
OLIVIA: You only started acting because I did!
JOAN: And I suppose I was born only because you were first there, too!
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Kevin Brownlow wrote "The Parade's Passed By" and then produced the Hollywood series that changed my life. Richard Schickel did The Men Who Made the Movies for PBS and Life produced a wonderful documentary directed by Jack Haley, Jr LIfe Goes to the Movies that I still remember to this day.
Brownlow's book is called The Parade's Gone By, and it is, indeed, indispensible.
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Bargar Flynn and O'Hara made a film called Against All Flags a pirate film in the 1950's.
"Bargar?"
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I thought I'd ask here first in case there was already a thread covering the subject. I am very curious as to where so many here gained their knowledge of film. I've been a film buff for 40-50 years (back to childhood), but what I know of film is infinitesimal compared to so many here. Some just seems a question of where a person was born and raised or lives. City versus rural determines a great deal as far as access goes. Thank God for video and for TCM. If this has been already been discussed in a thread, please direct me to it. Otherwise, I'm interested in starting a thread addressing the subject. I'm curious.
I drill holes in the skulls of the great film historians and professionals, siphon out and and drink their cerebro-spinal fluid, but that is, admittedly, the lazy man's method of absorbing all this stuff.
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Yeah, and maybe Karl Malden will show up at my door and assume his NEVADA SMITH demeanor.
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"The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side."
Unfortunately, that is not true. Scarecrow should demand another brain.
He's going to have to get on the waiting list behind that Bush guy (and pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, even if he does look like Dick Cheney).
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I think that the Serbs should start smoking more (hard to do, considering how much they smoke already), so that they'll all die out and leave the rest of the world in peace.
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Michael Winner. Awful director, one of the worst who ever lived.
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"From its founding 90 years ago by four of the most gifted artists of their time, United Artists recognized the power of movies and created a studio where filmmakers could see their visions realized," Tom Cruise, co-owner of United Artists, said in a release. "The films included in this festival are just a small sample of UA's illustrious history."
Subliminal Scientology recruiting pitches with be inserted into each film, but don't worry: you'll never notice them (remember: dues for Auditing and rental of e-meters are due the first of every month).
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John Huston used to say that he'd tried to make THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING, with Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable, in the early 1950s, but couldn't get the project off the ground (obviously, he finally managed to do it a quarter-century later, with the perfect cast of Michael Caine and Sean Connery).
While it's a shame that Bogart and Gable never did get to work together, as the results might've been fascinating, it probably would've been rather disastrous mis-casting. Both men were way too American, and not remotely the sort who could pull off 19th Century British Empire soldier-of-fortune types (which Caine & Connery managed so effortlessly).
Now, Cary Grant and Errol Flynn as the Kipling tale's Peachy and Danny, that would've been wonderful casting, and it's an equal shame that these two great stars never got to share the same movie.
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I learned years ago, while working in the media:
TV works best when program hosts are fairly good looking. Radio works best when hosts have great voices. Newspaper columns work best when the writers have a special way with words.
You can?t take one person out of one medium and automatically think he or she will fit well into another medium.
I would not want to see a Broderick Crawford type arguing about movies with Mr. Osborne on TCM.
TV may make more money when the folks in front of the camera are good-looking, but that's a very different thing from "working better," especially since you didn't bother to define what that means (means to you, anyway).
As for Broderick Crawford, his godson is one of my closest friends (and also called Broderick). But would you call Walter Cronkite a "Broderick Crawford-type?" An argument could be made that he is. And would we, as viewers, be better served by him, or Edward R. Murrow, or David Brinkley or any of the old, rumpled dinosaurs who learned their craft on the front lines or Blitz-ravaged streets of London in World War II, than the perky (and largely empty-headed) Barbie and Ken dolls that populate TV news today, whose first priority is...how they look on camera?
I don't need a reply; the above is a purely rhetorical question, whose answer is self-evident.
I don?t want to hear Carrie Fisher?s or Molly Haskell?s opinions. I don?t want to hear a ?stimulating debate? by two dames who don?t know anything about why people like certain films. I don?t want to hear a debate or see a pie fight before an ?Essentials? movie comes on. I want to see two charming people who agree as to the value of the particular movie coming up.
Of what earthly use is listening to two or more people agreeing with each other? That's like saying that a criminal trial would be so much more pleasant and quick if the prosecutor and defense counsel agreed beforehand that the defendant is already guilty or innocent (unfortunately, it actually works that way in some countries...and Guantanamo trials, in which there is no defense attorney permitted).
When the Republic was founded, the Framers of the Constitution determined that the basics of English Common Law, which prssumes an adversarial relationship between prosecution and defense, is the only way to protect the rights of the accused, and the interests of the society in whose courts the trials will take place. So it is even with movies, in which opposing, or at least differing, points of view illuminate the value and make-up of a film far better and more thoroughly than the sort of love-fest you seem to favor.
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But she played a schemer in Niagra..and I think she had a certain innocence and vulnerability and would have been just fine as Phoebe...
The whole point is that Phoebe is a schemer; whatever "innocence and vulnernability" she displays is an act, and that it's as true of her every bit as much as it was with Eve. That kind of thing was simply beyond Monroe's ability as an actress, and was just outside of her range and persona.
Mankiewicz's point was that reaching the top of a pyramid inevitably creates and encourages younger rivals who want to throw you off; one of them just as inevitably succeeds, but the process continues relentlessly: there are now a new crop of up-and-comers to claw at the new top dog and dethrone her or him.
Interestingly, Fox under Zanuck made another film the same year which relied on that basic premise: the excellent Henry King/Gregory Peck Western, THE GUNFIGHTER. Just substitute notorious gunslinger Jimmy Ringo (Peck) for Margo, and callow by ambitious wanna-be "gunny" Hunt Bromley (Skip Homier) for Eve, and you have the same general story.
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Well, that's an interesting choice. And your post reminded me from that great line in The Freshman - "There's a kind of freedom in knowing you're completely ******, because you know things couldn't possibly get any worse".
While in college, I was instructed by a wise old woman as to the perils inherent in speaking in superlatives or absolutes. As such, when one considers that we live in a Universe at once infinitely large, and made up of components infinitesimally small, the potential always exists that things can get worse.
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Molly Haskell is plenty attractive for a sixty-eight-year-old (69 in September). If you're going to compare her with an actress half her age who, to some degree, earns a living based on her looks, Miss Haskell -- actually Mrs (film critic) Andrew Sarris -- is always going to be found wanting in the looks depertment.
Carrie Fisher, on the other hand, only looks 68.
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the Cleo of history is written of as being not extremely beautiful, but extremely charming, with a melodious voice. bewitching.
Interestingly, the line with which Margaret Mitchell opens her novel, Gone with the Wind," describes its protagonist in just such terms: "Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were..."
Hollywood films, on the other hand, seldom take the time to provide the the subtext to describe and explain an outwardly unattractive character whose appeal is more subtle, indirect and/or subversive, so they resort to the shorthand of physical beauty (obviously, big female stars who have built-in boxoffice appeal tend to be beautiful, so there's also that consideration; still, Vivien Leigh was not well known when David Selznick cast her as Scarlett, so he could have gone for an actress who more closely resebled what Mitchell had described in her book).
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The New York Times's obituary must've been in preparation for years, because it's of a depth worthy of Scofield's talent:
March 21, 2008
Paul Scofield, British Actor, Dies at 86
By BENEDICT NIGHTINGALE
Paul Scofield, the British actor who created the role of Sir Thomas More in Robert Bolt?s ?A Man for All Seasons? and brought freshness and power to Hamlet, King Lear and many other classic roles, died Wednesday at a hospital near his home in southern England, the Associated Press reported. He was 86.
He had been suffering from leukemia, his agent Rosalind Chatto said.
Mr. Scofield won international fame and an Academy Award for the 1966 film of ?A Man for All Seasons.?
Although he was regarded by his peers as one of the greatest actors in the English-speaking world, Mr. Scofield would have been better known to the public if he had been less withdrawn. He seldom gave interviews and never appeared on television talk shows, explaining that he hated chatting about himself and found his craft difficult to discuss. A shy, reclusive man, he even refused to accept the knighthood that was offered to him in the 1960?s. He became so used to being described by journalists as a private person that, he once joked, ?I half-expect people to phone me and say, ?Hello, is that Paul Scofield, the very private person?? ?
It was always difficult to sum up Paul Scofield?s qualities, because he was so wide-ranging an actor. But as early as 1949, the critic Harold Hobson wrote that all his performances ?have something of the other world about them: invariably he looks as if he has been reading ?The Turn of the Screw? and seen ghosts at midnight.?
Thanks partly to his bearing and his height ? he stood 6 foot 2 ? Mr. Scofield could also project external power and authority. The critical consensus was that beside Mr. Scofield, Laurence Olivier was lacking in depth and soul, John Gielgud was deficient in physical energy and a sense of danger, and Ralph Richardson was short on versatility.
Mr. Scofield?s fellow professionals were equally impressed. Gielgud admired his stillness and sense of mystery, describing him as ?a sphinx with a secret.? Peter Hall, who directed his Salieri in Peter Shaffer?s ?Amadeus,? said that as a young man he brought ?a sulphurous passion, an entirely new note? to the stage, and that there was always a tremendous tension beneath the surface, ?like a volcano erupting.? Richard Eyre, who directed him in the title role in Ibsen?s ?John Gabriel Borkman? in 1996, maintained that he was ?not just best there is, but the best there has ever been.?
His looks and voice were highly distinctive. His rocklike face became more and more lined with time, giving the impression of some deeply fissured cliff. The voice put the film director Fred Zinnemann in mind of ?a Rolls Royce being started,? but it was surprisingly adaptable. When he played Othello, or Captain Shotover in Shaw?s ?Heartbreak House,? it seemed majestically to rumble. Yet when he played the title role in an adaptation of ?Don Quixote,? it had become a tormented falsetto. He was, he said, ?prepared to sound ugly as long as the meaning is fresh.?
Mr. Scofield was physically adaptable as well. That was certainly the case with the character he rehearsed while still playing Hamlet in 1956, the ?whisky priest? in Graham Greene?s ?The Power and the Glory.? Peter Brook, who directed, described in his memoirs how the role eluded Mr. Scofield until ?Hamlet? closed and he cut his mane of hair: ?The door opened and a small man entered. He was wearing a black suit, steel-rimmed glasses and holding a suitcase. For a moment we wondered why this stranger was wandering on our stage. Then we realized it was Paul, transformed. His tall body had shrunk, he had become insignificant.? The performance that followed is remembered as one of his finest.
But the role that brought Mr. Scofield international renown, was Sir Thomas More in ?A Man for All Seasons,? which opened on the London stage in 1960. The mix of moral strength, intelligence, melancholy and wily grace he brought to Henry VIII?s disgraced Lord Chancellor won him a Tony Award when he made his Broadway debut in the role in the 1961-2 season. That was followed by an Academy Award as best actor when Fred Zinnemann directed him in the movie version.
Although Mr. Scofield?s Thomas More is indelibly remembered, most critics rated others of his performances even more highly. When he played Khlestakov in Gogol?s ?Government Inspector? in 1966 as ?a fantasticated poseur as stupid as his victims,? Peter Hall said it was one of the half-dozen best he had ever seen. Collectors of great acting cited his Lear, his brooding Uncle Vanya in 1970, his titanically angry Timon of Athens in 1965, his magnificently warm, doting Othello in 1980, his darkly embittered Salieri in 1981 and his Voight, the ex-jailbird who poses as a military man in Zuckmayer?s ?Captain of Koepenick.?
When the National Theater staged ?Captain of Koepenick?in 1971, every part of Mr. Scofield seemed to be acting, from his adenoidal voice to his dropped eyelids, from his slumped shoulders to feet that shuffled, danced or trudged, depending on the state of the character?s private war with German bureaucracy.
Despite his prodigious gifts and international fame, when the curtain fell Mr. Scofield simply hopped the commuter train back to his family. ?I decided a long time ago I didn?t want to be a star personality and live my life out in public,? he once said. ?I don?t think it?s a good idea to wave personality about like a flag and become labeled.?
Paul Scofield was born David Paul Scofield on Jan. 21, 1922, in the village of Hurstpierpoint, Sussex, where his father became the headmaster of the local school. He received his secondary education at Varndean School in nearby Brighton and made his debut as Juliet in ?Romeo and Juliet? on the school stage in 1935. ?I had to wear an embarrassing blond wig.? he once recalled. ?But it was a turning point, because thenceforward there was nothing else I wanted to do.?
Soon afterward the stage-struck boy was hired to appear in a crowd scene in a touring adaptation of Dickens?s ?A Tale of Two Cities? that visited the Theatre Royal in Brighton; he always kept as a memento the cudgel he had to wave. That appearance reinforced his determination to become a professional actor, and in 1939 he enrolled at a small school attached to the Croydon Repertory Theater. The school closed soon after the outbreak of World War II, but young Scofield, who was excused from military service because of deformed toes, moved on to the Mask School in London, which itself was then evacuated from its headquarters in Westminster to Bideford, Devon.
At Bideford and later at Cambridge he gave public performances in roles ranging from the psychotic killer in Emlyn Williams?s ?Night Must Fall? to the title character in Obey?s ?Noah? for a student company run by Sybil Thorndike?s sister, Eileen. There followed a series of professional tours, largely to hostels for munitions workers, during which the young actor got the chance to play Horatio and Tybalt in ?Hamlet? and Sergius in Shaw?s ?Arms and the Man.? It was in this period that he met and married a fellow performer, Joy Parker.
His first big break came in 1944, when at 22 he was asked by Sir Barry Jackson to join one of the Britain?s most important companies, the Birmingham Repertory Theater. In his first year, Mr. Scofield?s roles included Young Marlow in Goldsmith?s ?She Stoops to Conquer? and Konstantin in Chekhov?s ?The Seagull.? He was admired by the local critics for his ?shaggy grace? as well as for his gift for the ironic and sardonic. The following year a 20-year-old director and enfant terrible named Peter Brook arrived at Birmingham and a unique collaboration was struck.
As Mr. Brook recalled in his memoirs, he was introduced to Paul Scofield by Sir Barry: ?As we shook hands, I looked into a face that unaccountably in a young man was streaked and mottled like old rock, and I was instantly aware that something very deep lay hidden beneath his ageless appearance. Paul was courteous, distant, but as we began to work an instant understanding arose between us, needing very few words, and I realized that beneath the gentle modesty of his behavior lay the absolute assurance of a born artist.?
It was the start of a partnership that was to culminate in Mr. Scofield?s memorable King Lear for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1962, a character that, as redefined by Mr. Brook and his leading actor, was far from the majestic victim of theatrical tradition. For once, audiences could see the cruel daughters? point of view. Here was a choleric, wilfully arrogant, dangerously mercurial, semiretired tyrant, and, largely as a consequence, one whose emotional re-education was particularly painful.
?This production brings me closer to Lear than I have ever been,? wrote the critic Kenneth Tynan. ?From now on I not only know him but can place him in his harsh and unforgiving world.?
Among the first fruits of the Brook-Scofield partnership were a brilliant Tanner in Shaw?s ?Man and Superman,? a magnetic Bastard in Shakespeare?s ?King John? and a grim Dr. Mangel in Ibsen?s ?Lady from the Sea.?
?He annexed playgoing Birmingham,? said J. C. Trewin, later the theater critic of the Birmingham Post, in the short study of Mr. Scofield he published in 1956. It was, then, no great surprise when he went on virtually to annex Stratford in the summer seasons between 1946 and 1948, demonstrating his range by playing for Peter Brook a glittering Mercutio in ?Romeo and Juliet? and a melancholy Don Armado in ?Love?s Labor?s Lost? , and, for other directors, Henry V, Cloten in ?Cymbeline,? Mephistopheles in Marlowe?s ?Dr. Faustus,? Troilus, Bassanio, Pericles, a vulnerable, haunted Hamlet and a Andrew Aguecheek in ?Twelfth Night? that one critic likened to ?a knight made of pink blancmange.?
Clearly, Mr. Scofield was ready to storm London, and he did so, first as Alexander the Great in Terence Rattigan?s ?Adventure Story,? next in Peter Brook?s production of the fashionable Jean Anouilh?s ?Ring Round the Moon,? in which he played identical twins, one a heartless rogue, the other a retiring, ingenuous fellow.
By the early 1950?s Paul Scofield was firmly established as the leading actor of his generation, the natural successor to the ruling triumvirate of Olivier, Gielgud and Richardson. It was inevitable that when Mr. Brook wanted a Hamlet strong enough both for the West End and a groundbreaking visit to Moscow during the Cold War , he should turn to Mr. Scofield, and that Mr. Scofield should respond with a performance of the prince that was widely regarded as even deeper and more wounded than the one he had given to such acclaim seven years before.
Inevitably Mr. Scofield came to the attention of Hollywood. He had turned down the offer of a seven-year film contract in 1946, feeling that the stage was where he belonged. But in 1955 he made his screen debut, playing King Philip of Spain opposite Olivia de Havilland in a period movie called ?That Lady.?
His performance won him a British Film Academy Award and the praise of the film?s production chief, Daryl Zanuck, who said, ?That actor! The best I have seen since John Barrymore.? But Mr. Scofield resisted the temptation to move to Hollywood, explaining that too many actors simply mouldered there. ?Something told me, don?t go!? he once recalled. ?Very, very few English actors managed to work successfully in Hollywood ? the Basil Rathbones and Cary Grants.?
When he took on a role, Mr. Scofield said that he ignored the advice of friends and agents, did not take money into consideration, and listened only to his inner voice. Sometimes that led to disasters, as when he agreed to play the role of a newspaper editor in Jeffrey Archer?s ?Exclusive? and ended up assailed by critics for contributing little more than ?a ridiculous nasal whine? to a critical and commercial flop.
His inner voice also led to a serious if brief falling-out in 1961 with Peter Hall, then the artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, when Mr. Scofield put a whole season in jeopardy by belatedly reneging on his agreement to play Shylock, Petruchio, and the role of Thersites in ?Troilus and Cressida.? ?Something deep inside was telling him it wasn?t right,? wrote Mr. Hall in his memoirs, admitting it took time before friendly relations were restored.
That inner voice also played a major part in Mr. Scofield?s rehearsals, which were painstaking yet ultimately based on instinct. As he said in a rare interview, technique is ?what you find yourself doing.? He arrived in the rehearsal room without plans or preconceptions, trusting that he would discover some aspect of the character on which he could build a lively, varied performance. That aspect was often a voice, sometimes a walk or a hairstyle, occasionally a key phrase. As Mr. Brook noted, ?on a simple word like ?night,? he?ll pause, stirred up in some mysterious inner chamber, and his whole nature will respond.?
Mr. Scofield was seen infrequently on the stage in the 1980s and even more seldom in the 1990s, partly because he found little work that attracted him, partly because of native caution. ?As you get older, the more you know, so the more nervous you become,? he said. ?The risks are much bigger.?
However, his last performance, Ibsen?s John Gabriel Borkman at the National Theater in 1996, was powerful enough to win him a major best-actor award. During that period, he also gave some striking performances on the screen, notably as the ghost in Franco Zefferelli?s version of ?Hamlet,? as the American professor Mark Van Doren in Robert Redford?s ?Quiz Show,? and as both the wealthy grandfather and the amoral great-uncle of the title character in a television adaptation of Dickens?s ?Martin Chuzzlewit.?
Mr. Scofield made no secret of his dislike of public life. He served as a director of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1966 to 1968 and as an associate director of the National Theater from 1970 to 1972, but in each case found the post unfulfilling. He became a Commander of the British Empire in 1956, but, after years of politely refusing to discuss the matter, admitted in 1996 that he had rejected the next step up the honors ladder. ?I have every respect? for people who are offered a knighthood, he said. ?It?s just not an aspect of life I would want. If you want a title, what?s wrong with Mister??
Though his warmth and generosity both in the rehearsal room and on the stage were frequently acknowledged, Mr. Scofield did not often mix socially with his fellow actors. He commuted to London from Balcombe, the village near Hurstpierpoint where he and his wife had lived for many years, and, at the end of a performance, would simply return home by train. It was, he once said, a matter of reclaiming the identity he was temporarily sacrificing in the theater.
He often went for long walks in the Sussex hills, liked to bake bread, and occasionally paid a visit to the Scottish island of Mull, where his daughter Sarah lives. In addition to his wife of 64 years he is survived by his daughter and a son, Martin.
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Marilyn's whole screen persona painted a picture of someone not nearly smart enough to be such a schemer, especially if the one she's scheming to push aside is Eve Harrington (who was smart enough to torpedo Margo Channing). In addition, she'd certainly never get past the severe scrutiny of Addison DeWitt.
Monroe would never have been convincing in such a part, period.
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Are you serious? Almost all of my friends read regularly.
Wonderful, but can they recognize any words other than "regularly?"
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TRIUMPH OF THE WILL: nothing says "Things could be worse" better than that.
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A great visionary, and champion of Reason. We need more like him, and can't afford to lose any.
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When is 20th Century Fox going to change their name?
They're not. The company's name describes very nicely the 1935 merger between Darryl Zanuck & Joseph Schenck's 20th Century Pictures and William Fox's Fox Film Corporation (which had built the West Los Angeles studio that is still home to the company), and the time of the company's founding.
20th Century Fox has trademarked the name "21st Century Fox" (amd, for all I know, "22nd Century," "23rd Century," etc.), not because they ever intend to use it, but because they don't want some fly-by-night outfit calling themselves something uncomfortably close to the Real McCoy. You'd do better asking when, or whether, the dropped hyphen between "Century" and "Fox" will ever be restored to the company's official name.
HOLLYWOOD: YOU GOT NO STARS LEFT
in General Discussions
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Awaiting for me on Wed is a 10' x 20' wall.
Death by firing squad, eh?
"Our complaints are brief, and we make them against the nearest wall."
...Afrika Korps Lt Schwoegler (Peter van Eyck) to Egyptian Farid (Akim Tamiroff), explaining the Nazis' one simple rule for occupied territories in FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO, screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder.