jdb1
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Posts posted by jdb1
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Ken, I don't think he was merely in every noir ever made, I think he was in just about every film and TV drama ever made from the 40s through the 80s
I think whatever Ol' Whit wasn't in, Harry Morgan and/or Kennan Wynn was.
I always liked Mr. Bissell, especially his melifluous and instantly recognizable speaking voice.
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January 29. Today's birthday: Playwright/screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky
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Sorry, Dan, I've got nothing this afternoon. I'm in the midst of trying to add additional weatherproofing to my windows (I rent). Just checked in to see how everyone is. My windows are like the Old Haney Farm on "Green Acres." They refuse to be repaired. Cold termperatures predicted for tomorrow - it gets freezing in here.
Anyone else may feel free to interpose. I may have one for you this evening.
PS - I don't mind "old girl" even though I am rather old. A fortunate set of good genes keeps me from minding it. One of my best friends always calls me "Old Bean," but he's a double Harvard man, so allowances have to be made.
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Well, Dan, I was looking not at number of films made, but at length of career span, and Tracy and Heflin were pretty close in that respect, although in different time frames.
Anyway -- How about Ernest Borgnine?
He was an Oscar winner. He was in the Navy for about 10 years before he started acting. He was the star of "McHale's Navy" on TV. He was in the Broadway production of "Harvey." And (most) people in the audience never actually saw that eponymous pooka. His career has spanned over 50 years.
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Is it Van Heflin? He was a lifelong sailing enthusiast.
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Jerome Cowan is correct. Good work, Ken, but it appears that Bartlett posted the correct answer first.
Besides portraying the quickly killed off Miles Archer in "The Maltese Falcon," Cowan was in "Miracle on 34th Street" as the unfortunate district attorney who had to prosecute Kris Kringle. Cowan gave dependable character support in over a hundred films, including as Dagwood Bumstead's irrascible boss in many, if not all, of the movies in the "Blondie" series.
Who's on deck?
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> How about Pierre Watkin?
No, no - I was better known that Watkin.
Let's see now -- in one of my more famous films I played a public official who had to argue against one of the world's most popular figures. That film is shown every year, for a good reason. There are two versions of that film, one of which is somewhat controversial, even though the versions are identical in all respects but one.
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> He told me that he was living in Seattle or some
> place north of LA when he was about to turn 20. He
> said he and a brother or a cousin discussed future
> careers and they decided to go to Hollywood to see if
> they could get into the movies as actors.
>
> He said he went around to the studios and no one
> needed him, but one studio (I think Warner Brothers)
> just happened to need someone who could do voices for
> cartoons, so they did a test with him. He said he
> didn't know he could do voices for cartoons. He said
> he had never thought about it before. But he did some
> funny voices for them and was hired.
Very interesting, that, FredC. Stan Freberg tells pretty much the same story about himself in his memoirs, as I recall. He was a kid of about 17, and wanted to be a radio announcer. He went around to various radio stations and studios in LA, and happened to go into the WB cartoon studios to ask for a job. A man in the reception area took him by the arm into a studio where Mel Blanc was recording, handed Freberg a script, and he and Blanc started recording voices for a cartoon. I think it was one with Bugs Bunny and a dopey hunting dog (that was Freberg - you know - "Which way did he go, George?"). Since only Mel Blanc got screen credit, no one knew that the other voice was a teenage Stan Freberg. Apparently, things were handled very casually at WB cartoons.
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January 27. Today's birthday: Sabu
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No, I'm not Mowbray either. I was born in NYC.
In my early films I sometimes played gangsters (usually the "dude" kind), but most often I was a professional man - businessman, attorney, editor. Sometimes I was a rejected suitor, and sometimes an opportunistic "other man." I played a choleric boss in a series of films based on popular charcacters from another media source.
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Nope, not Qualen either.
In one of the most famous films I was in, I started the plot rolling by getting killed. A small part, but a notable one.
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Our favorite centenarian. No, I'm not Lane.
My screen persona was never quite as prickly as was Lane's. I was always something of a smooth operator. My characters were generally slightly higher on the social scale than Lane's.
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Here's another while I have a moment:
Do you know me?
I always dressed like a gentleman, but didn't always behave like one. I was always a supporting player, generally overshadowed by the charisma of the stars, but always essential to the plot. Maybe I was one of those actors who made audiences say "What's his name again?" but I worked steadily, on the stage, and then in over 200 films and TV shows. I had a small but crucial part in one of cinema's enduring classics, and in another such film I played the kind of thankless and unsympathetic part I played in most of my movies. In that one, I had to support a very unpopular position. I lost, as usual. Both films are shown on TV very often, although one of them is generally shown only at a particular time.
Who am I?
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> Jay Silverheels (Tonto), born on the Six Nations
> Reservation in Ontario. Was the spokesperson for
> improving the portrayal on Indians on television.
Jay Silverheels is the man I was thinking of. Born Harold Smith, he did work tirelessly for the improvement of Indian rights in entertainment and in the real world. He also founded an acting school intended for Indian actors, to help them to break out of casting stereotypes.
However, the commercial I was thinking of in this instance was for the Jeep Scout, for which Silverheels did several TV ads (as himself, not as Tonto), the tagline of which was "Get 'em up, Scout!" (Scout being the name of Tonto's horse.)
Silverheels was also in the advertising hall of fame Lone Ranger/Tonto commercials done by Stan Freberg for Pizza Rolls. Remember? To the tune of the William Tell Overture: "Have a pizz, have a pizz, have a pizza roll."
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> Which classic actor would you like to bring home to
> meet your parents?
Sabu
>
> Which classic actor would you like to dance with?
Edward Arnold
> Which classic actor would you like to see as a
> Playgirl centerfold?
Jeff Chandler
>
> Which classic actor would you like to wake up in bed
> with?
Jeffrey Hunter
>
> Which classic actor would you like to yell and scream
> at on a bad day?
James Cagney (he could take it)
>
> Which classic actor would you tell your innermost
> thoughts to?
Hmmmm . . . . . maybe Cuddles Sakall
>
> Which classic actor wouldn't you mind having a
> one-night stand with and never seeing again?
Cary Grant
>
> Which classic actor would you like a long-term
> relationship with?
Have to think about that - someone who would make me laugh and who loves music - maybe Harpo Marx
>
> Which classic actor would you like to have as a
> brother?
Fred Astaire
>
> Which classic actor would you like to have a photo of
> above your bed?
Laurel & Hardy (already have one!)
>
> Which classic actor would you run the other way
> from?
Erroll Flynn/John Barrymore
>
> Which classic actor would you replace your
> boyfriend/husband with?
Oscar Levant or Walter Brennan (can I have one of each - boyfriend and husband?)
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Lynn makes a good point about how today's Hollywood overlooks its core audience (those over 12, for instance) in favor of the "quick fix" profit.
As I see it, one of the problems is that movie production entities these days are publicly traded companies. When you have to please stockholders by issuing attractive dividends, good sense tends to be pushed aside. I wonder just what place stockholders should have in dictating what kinds of movies should be made, anyway.
The same holds true for just about any publicly traded entity: the stockholders come first, and their interests are rarely on the side of art for art's sake. I'm a modest stockholder myself, and I'm not in it for the esthetics, although I do try to invest in funds that might even peripherally do some good, somewhere. Please the stockholders, please the boards of directors and the executives, all with $$$, and the public be damned. The fact that we are the people who are putting the real money into these companies, by being the consumers, is immaterial, it seems. How is it that the Hollywood studio owners of old managed to make lots and lots of money, but still put out a good product and maintained artistic integrity to boot?
Well, I think a big part of that has to do with our current education system, which denigrates art in favor of vocational guidance. If young people were taught to appreciate "the finer things," there would be more of a demand for it. How many el/hi schools today offer any kind art or music "appreciation" courses? They don't because no one thinks such things are important. A few public awareness campaigns might do a world of good.
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January 26. Today's birthday: Vito Scotti
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Weissmuller, Montalban, Conrad.
All well-reasoned guesses, but all incorrect.
I started out in films as a stuntman. I made about 100 movies, almost all of the same genre. There are only 3 or 4 pictures in which I played something else. I was in films with, among others, Humphrey Bogart, Walter Brennan and Tyrone Power, but my name was not well-known by the public. Television changed all that, but I was still playing the same kind of role I played so many times before.
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We're not hearing back from Mose, so I'm going to jump the line and pose one while Mose regroups:
Do you know me?
I was born in another country, but had my film career in the US. I changed my name to get work more easily. I was an athlete when I was young, and spent time in the ring as an amateur boxer. Because the kinds of roles I played, in many of my films I was shirtless. I was very popular on TV, and was for a while the commercial spokesman for a product whose name was coincidentally associated with me.
Who am I?
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> Thought provoking thread!
>
> I'm inclined to think it's the same thing that's
> happened to the world in general.
>
> To be more specific to Hollywood: I think the worst
> thing of all may be the demise of the old studio
> system. Whatever its faults, if it didn't exist
> we would not be here talking about the stars and
> directors who would not have gotten work, there would
> be no TCM....and no Gone With the Wind.
>
>
> Miss G
I'm with you there, Miss G. Notwithstanding the legion of missteps the studio system may have perpetrated, and the personal shortcomings of some of the men who made movies, I think the studio system had two very positive qualities: first, it kept its actors and other employees in line, at least in front of the public, and second, it respected the tastes and sensibilities of its audience. I don't feel the least bit respected by slasher movies, do you?
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For me the worst thing that's happened to movies over the last 20 years is cinema businessmen allowing 20-year-olds to make films, starring other 20-year-olds, which cater to the tastes of 15-year-olds, and then rating those films "R" as though to give them some adult credibility. I find most movies these days, compared with their classic counterparts, to be essentially unsophisticated. Their sophistication is of the Hugh Heffner mold - a constant diet of unclothed women and simulated sex isn't particularly sophisticated to mature adults (although it may be titillating). In fact, as executed by Hollywood, those things appear rather gratuitous and sophomoric. Not that a little titillation isn't nice once in a while, but life isn't all abused women, foul language, steroid-enhanced men with no shirts, and car crashes. Escapism has turned ugly.
Take a film like the fine "The Station Agent." I'd describe it as an "adult film." That's because it's about grownup people in real-life adult situations which only peripherally involve sex and cars. There is so much more to life that that, but you'd never know it from what Hollywood is producing these days.
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That's it. Pretty impressive, old boy.
Both gentlemen were married to Margo (often called "the sultry Margo" in fan magazines). Consecutively, that is - first Lederer, then Albert.
Who has another?
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Ok, Dan, I've got one.
Two long-lived actors, one who played a traveling salesman, and one who played Dracula, had something in common. Who are they, and what did they have in common?
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Joan Blondell, Estelle Winwood, Tallulah Bankhead
Do You Know Me?
in Games and Trivia
Posted
Bartlett, can you please give us a little more to work with? For example, a time frame might help us use process of elimination. You don't have to give away too much at a time, just a little nudge. My guesses thus far were pretty much the same as those who posted, and I also thought of:
Gale Gordon,
but what "classic movie" was he ever in? I can't think of one. Hmmm, "pompous next door neighbor." Larry Keating?