JackBurley
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Posts posted by JackBurley
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"Finally. everyone raves about 'As Good as it Gets', but I found it boring, stupid, and totally reproachful considering the attitude to Greg Kinear, so you see, I just don't appreciate much about newer movies."
Well now, not everyone raves about it. I thought it was derivative, cliched and unbelievable. Yup: hated it. I left the theatre while rolling my eyes. But I still love the art form of cinema -- yes, even in its current guise...
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I wonder why they feel they need to categorize the set by genre... why not just call it the Tyrone Power Set and mix 'em up?
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"I am watching The Girl From the Golden West and this movie is just as bad as they get."
Are you familiar with Puccini's opera La Fanciulla del West ("The Girl of the Golden West")? I'm wondering if there's any similarity in plot or if they used any of the musical themes from the opera?
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"It's a sick thing and I really believe they need a psychiatrist. Sorry it's just not funny and very distasteful to me."
I presume that the "sick thing" you're referring to is transvestism, but movie plotlines rarely involve transvestites or dressing in drag for pleasure. Rather, they are in hiding from the mob (Some Like It Hot), in need of a chaperone (Charley's Aunt) or living during a period when women weren't allowed on stage (Shakespeare in Love). Classic Hollywood apparently agrees with you, as the drag characters in their films rarely do so because they want to, but rather are forced by circumstances. In fact, it's the character's discomfort which is intended to add to the comedy (I Was a Male War Bride).
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Unfortunately fasteddie, Larry left here yesterday and slammed the door behind him...
http://forums.tcm.com/jive/tcm/thread.jspa?threadID=85581&tstart=0
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Dorothy Dare was featured in the Busby Berkeley spectacle Gold Diggers of 1935, but unfortunately I don't think she was given anything to sing in it...
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Many critics have hailed Stanley Kramer's work. NY Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote a rave review of Ship of Fools ending with:
"It is a perpetually engrossing and thought-provoking film that he has aptly put down at this moment, and it eminently deserves to be seen."
The Defiant Ones, On the Beach, Inherit the Wind and Judgment at Nuremberg were [and are] all considered important, worthy films. Mr. Kramer certainly deserves his tribute.
And so does Sr. Rossellini, so I hope TCM takes your suggestion in the future.
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I'd say you have been blessed with a vivid imagination. It is a youthful photograph of Mr. Holden. There may be some similarity there, but Mr. Holden's face is longer... Both were Hollywood handsome, eh?
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"About the only ones left now are Van Johnson, and Richard Widmark."
And Ann Blyth, Anne Francis, Ann Rutherford, Gloria DeHaven, Janis Paige, Margaret O'Brien, Hugh O'Brian, Maureen O'Hara, Debbie Reynolds, Kathryn Grayson, Robert Blake, Merv Griffin, Angela Lansbury, Rod Taylor, Joanne Woodward, Paul Newman, Claude Jarman, Clint Eastwood, Polly Bergen, Sally Ann Howes, Sean Connery, Ben Gazzara, Julie Newmar, Maximillian Schell, Terry Moore, Sidney Poitier, Vera Miles, Rita Moreno, George Chakiris, Sylvia Sims, Peggy Dow, Virginia Gibson, Edmund Purdom, Vic Damone, Olivia DeHavilland... okay, I'm getting carpal tunnel.
I say, let's drink a toast and show appreciation to the many who are still with us. And then, let's drink a second toast to TCM for keeping the rest alive for us...
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This would have been a good thread for the Silents Forum! Supposedly, some of the kids from Mary Pickford's Sparrows are still with us. They have attended recent screenings of this charming film. I believe Mary Louise Miller, Billie Butts and Sessel Ann Johnson are still alive.
Message was edited by: JackBurley (who didn't read the original post very carefully).
I just noticed you were asking about more than silent films... this adds many, many names. Here's a handy site to check on the living:
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Alas, Mame with the Merm (Ethel Merman) would be impossible as she never performed it for the movies nor for the stage. Angela Lansbury did this on stage (both originally in 1966 and the revival in 1983); Lucille Ball made the movie. Now to see a Miss Lansbury version on film would be very interesting. Unfortunately, to see Miss Ball is not. She broke her leg during the filming of the movie, and the dance numbers mainly involve chorus boys dancing around her statue-like form, harkening back to her showgirl days.
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Lady, Let's Dance, the Monogram Pictures ice skating musical featuring Frick and Frack was also shot at the location of the Arrowhead Springs Hotel in San Bernardino...
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I don't think I'm familiar with Kiarostami's work, so I hope you'll tell us more about this director in some thread or other...
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As winner, it's your perogative to take it back to actors. Thanks Mr. Master...
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The explanation of "Mornington Crescent" is found earlier in this thread. Enjoy!
http://forums.tcm.com/jive/tcm/thread.jspa?messageID=7815699
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"As a matter of fact, a lot of my favorites, foreign and domestic, are films many consider 'slow'."
Right you are. I've learned a "code": movies that others consider "slow", I often consider "evenly paced". And when someone says the director made a movie that was "self-indulgent", it means that I'll love it (e.g., many of the Fellini pictures, Fosse's All That Jazz, etc.).
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Let's see what we can do with this one:
La Cage aux Folles to The Birdcage
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My Sister Eileen?
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It's a shame Billy 'Froggy' Laughlin died so young. He was on a scooter when hit by a truck. Apparently his voice sounded that way because of a faulty tonsilectomy. Rough life. Billy Jack wasn't his brother, but Mickey Laughlin was.
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Grapes of Wrath < Darryl Hickman > Sharky's Machine
Sharky's Machine < Charles Durning > The Grass Harp
The Grass Harp < Mary Steenburgen > What's Eating Gilbert Grape?
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Lest we forget the influence of Max Factor (nee Frank Factor) who invented the pancake make-up -- foundation make-up that evened out skin tone and would conceal lip lines so that Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and others could "paint" on their trademark lip shapes -- the mascara wand and other innovations.
For character make-up, Jack Dawn was pretty swell (even if he did nearly kill Buddy Ebsen in The Wizard of Oz). So was Perc Westmore, who remolded Charles Laughton into The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
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"I Have a Feelin' You're Foolin'" was sung by June Knight and Robert Taylor. What great scenic design with all the accoutrement "erupting" from the floor! In this number Miss Knight also danced with Nick Long Jr. who played Basil Newcombe. I haven't seen it in years, but imagine you're thinking of either Mssrs. Taylor or Long...
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Sure enough, Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford passed away today (Wednesday, August 30, 2006). He was born on May 1, 1916, the son of a railroad executive and mill owner and nephew of Sir John MacDonald, a former prime minister of Canada and the descendant of Martin Van Buren, eighth president of the United States.
He started his life in Glenford where his family had a paper mill. He later took the name for his "stage" name.
He was married four times, including to MGM star Eleanor Powell in 1943. They had a son, Peter, but divorced in 1959. He was married to Kathryn Hays for one year (1966), In 1977 he wed Cynthia Hayward until that union ended in 1984. Then he married Jeanne Baus in 1993.
Living Large, Living Long
in Silent
Posted
Rochelle Hines recently wrote a feature that was picked up by the Associated Press about Doris Eaton Travis. It was printed in the San Francisco Chronicle on September 1, 2006, with a dateline of Norman, Oklahoma. Here are some excerpts about the:
Last Ziegfeld Girl Still Dancing at 102
After more than 90 years as a hoofer, dancing still comes easily to Doris Eaton Travis, who was a chorus girl in the extravagant Ziegfeld Follies. "I'm the last of the Ziegfeld Follies girls now," she says. "It's an honor in a way. I certainly didn't think that would happen."
She is 102, with a few wrinkles and white curly hair that frames her eyes of blue. She credits her longevity to her ongoing love affair with dancing and other lifestyle choices -- "I didn't drink or smoke. I didn't abuse myself physically," she says.
Not only has Travis survived physically and mentally, but professionally as well, with annual appearances on Broadway, a small role in a Jim Carrey movie and her recent memoir The Days We Danced: The Story of My Theatrical Family From Florenz Ziegfeld to Arthur Murray and Beyond.
Back at her 400-acre ranch, about 10 miles northwest of the University of Oklahoma, Travis saunters around her 1970's rambler in a Southwest-inspired pantsuit and moccasins. She recalls details of the past 10 decades as if they happened yesterday.
Interest in the 5-foot-2 centenarian has piqued since 1997 reunion with four other Ziegfeld Follies girls for the reopening of the New Amsterdam Theater in New York City, where she danced about 80 years earlier. "I was the only one who could still dance," she says, chuckling.
That led to her annual involvement in the "Broadway Cares/Actors Equity Fights AIDS" benefit, where she caught the eye of Carrey and director Milos Foreman, who were making the movie Man on the Moon about the life of Andy Kauffman. "I played this woman who was supposed to be an actress who was no longer popular. I had to ride a stick horse and faint and then get resusitated," Travis says, laughing as she does a fake gallop.
Travis was born March 14, 1904, one of seven children to newspaper linotype operator Charles Eaton and his wife, Mary, in Norfolk, Virginia. Some of the children, who became known as "The Eatons of Broadway", got their first break when a stock company production of The Blue Bird appeared in Washington, D.C., in 1911. Travis and her sisters, Pearl and Mary, had only small roles, but it led to steady work in other local plays and lead roles when The Blue Bird returned to Washington three years later.
Pearl Eaton nabbed a part in the chorus of the Ziegfeld Follies of 1918 and Travis became the youngest Ziegfeld Follies girl when she was hired at age 14 (she lied to producers and said she was 16). She became a principal dancer in 1920. Travis recalls Ziegfeld was a "very nice and very pleasant" man who became a good friend of her family.
She turned to silent movies, appearing in At the Stage Door with Billie Dove and The Broadway Peacock with Pearl White in 1920, and Tell Your Children [directed by Donald Crisp!] in 1922. "I think I enjoyed musical theater much more than the movies," she says.
Travis' love of dancing and musical theater was shaken a year later when the stock market crash of 1929 ushered in the Depression and an end to many theaters. She continued to do stock company productions and even appeared in the chorus line of the movie Whoopee! with Eddie Cantor, but by the mid-1930's, work was hard to find.
At a friend's suggestion, she applied for a job as a tap dance instructor at Arthur Murray Dance Studios in New York. She got the job and branched in social dance. She eventually opened a Murray franchise in Michigan and began a second career.
In 1999, she got to perform with her brother Charlie Eaton in the Easter Bonnet Show at the New Amsterdam Theater, where both had performed in the Follies. He passed away in 2004. "It's kind of sad to be the last of the Eatons", says Travis, who never had children. "But here I am."
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Note: I hope someone will interview her about working in silent films; Billie Dove, Pearl White, Donald Crisp, Archie Mayo (who directed the comedy short High Kickers with Ms. Travis in 1923), Jack Oakie and Ned Sparks (who made Street Girl with her in 1928), and Sallie Blane (with whom she made The Very Idea in 1929). She could tell us more of what it was like to work at RKO in '29!