jdb1
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Posts posted by jdb1
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You really should try to see it in the theater, if you love this movie. You will be struck by how fresh and timeless it looks on screen. Imagine what the original audiences must have felt! Both Gable and Leigh were made for the big screen - they are amazingly beautiful up there.
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I'm with you on "West Side Story." I recall that I was a young teen, and there was so much hubbub and excitement about it, and I heard my peers gushing and oohing and ahhing, and when I saw it, I was bewildered. What was all the fuss about? Maybe, just maybe, the stage version was better and it didn't transfer to film too well. Maybe up close views of dancers trying to look like gang members and jete-ing and leg-extending just didn't play well on the big screen. And maybe with better leads there would have been more Romeo-Juliet tension. Who knows? All I know is that I was very disappointed, and I have no patience with it now.
Don't care much for the others you mentioned, either. How many of us movie goers gush and rave just because everyone else is doing it? All too many, I'd say. However, I stand by my revulsion regarding "How to Murder Your Wife." As always, such things are entirely subjective. I had a very negative reaction to it when I first saw it (and I was much younger then), and my reaction hasn't changed, even though I've learned something about the gray shadings of life. Part of the dislike there stems from my general dislike of Jack Lemmon - I do like a few of his performances, but not many. He's at his Lemmonest in that movie.
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Fred Clark -- good one. Maybe we should categorize them by type (those that always played to type, that is). Grumpy, exasperated, caustic, sweet/kindly, threatening, dumb/dithering, endearing, hotties, he-men, etc. There should be a category for scholarly/academic/serious, ethnic (like John Qualen or J. Carroll Naish, who played any and all enthnicities), and what else, and who else?
For example --
Ethnic/Dialects:
John Qualen
J. Carroll Naish
Dumb/Dithering:
Max Rosenbloom
ZaSu Pitts
Scholarly/Academic/Serious
Lewis Stone
How about "Battleax" with a substrata of "Grande Dame?"
Helen Westly
Edna May Oliver
Flora Robson
Margaret Dumont
And so on.
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If you read Jeremy Arnold's piece on the main page on "I Wake Up Screaming," you will note that he mentions at the end of the article that character actor Charles Lane is alive and well at age 101. Glad to hear it. I just ran an eye over his credits on IMBD, and they goe on and on and on.
I think I remember him best from his many TV appearances, although once I knew who he was I spotted him in the background of many classic movies. He was usually the brusque bureaucrat, haughty teacher, irrascible store keeper, etc. It's no secret to anyone who knows my cinematic preferences that I love the character actors the best, and Lane is one of my especial favorites. He always looked so annoyed, and so rushed, and everything he said sounded so caustic. He was just like the adults I knew, back in the day, who had no patience with children, and couldn't wait to be rid of you, only he was usually funny about it.
It's as I told my daughter when she had thoughts of becoming an actor: be a character actor, and you'll always be working.
Now - who do we love? And who was especially productive and was "in everything" and perhaps made the transition to TV? We spoke on another thread about the recently deceased Arthur Franz, who was one of the ubiquitous character players. Harry Morgan, Whit Bissel and Lane are obvious. What about DeForest Kelly? He's was in the movies (I've seen him mostly in westerns) long before Star Trek. Among the ladies, Spring Byington comes to mind first. There are so many others, I'd appeciate it if you would kindly refresh my memory.
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Well, it's not working that way. I already tried several times to click on the "unconfirmed" button beside my new address, but it sends the confirmation to my old address, and when I click that to confirm, it does nothing. The new email address is still "unconfirmed" and the delete button next to my old address is still grayed out. I've done it about 4 times now. What can I do?
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Is it "The Phantom Planet" (1960/61)?
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Yes, this is a beautiful film, and it's ten times better at the theater. You can't get the true impact of the scene with the wounded laying scattered at the train depot until you see it on the big screen. And Rhett and Scarlett saying farewell on the road, and Scarlett in the field swearing she'll never go hungry again -- Wow. It's wonderful to see it in your own home, but you have to see it in the theater to see how really great a film it is. It deserves every accolade it's gotten.
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Wouldn't this have been something with someone like Burt Lancaster or Kirk Douglas instead of Ford? I'm not a great lover of Douglas, but he knew how to be intense. Would they have been too young? How about John Garfield, or Bogart? Or maybe they should have switched the roles and let Geo. Macready play the Ford part. (I always think of Montgomery Burns when I see Macready in Gilda.)
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You are lucky, for sure. I'm not a dancer by any means, but if I were, I'd want to be just like Charisse. I adored her when I was a girl. I'm very glad to hear that she is well and active.
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I know the one you mean - they showed it on MST3000. The astronauts landed on a comet and shrank. Francis X. Bushman was in it, no? Anyone know the title of that one?
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I agree with your assessment that this movie should be shown as an example of previous cultural mores.
But I hate it - I find it one of the most disturbing, anti-female exercises I've ever seen outside of pornography (or so I've heard). Everything about this movie is frantic, mean-spirited and unfunny. Compare it with Divorce, Italian Style, which is just as dark in subject matter, but which manages to amuse, deal with universal themes, and not to offend.
When they show it to young people, it should come equipped with a study guide -- kids, this isn't how you treat women, and this isn't what women are for, for that matter this isn't even what men are for, and this isn't what marriage is all about.
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First of all Rose, let me say that I am a Joe E. Brown fan myself, and even moreso since TCM ran those films of his lately. I have read a few things about his life that indicate that he was quite a nice guy as well.
Next, I have to place myself on the "Against" column for Allyson. She was quite nice at first, but I found her more and more affected, and generally seriously miscast in everything she did, beginning in the 1950s. I didn't buy the cute and perky persona -- there was little warmth behind that smile. I was just a kid at that time, and I generally had a very negative reaction to her. Does anyone think that her marriage to Dick Powell, a big-time player in Hollywood production at the time (TV mostly, I think), had something to do with her "I'm the Queen; I can play any part I want" attitude? I don't think anyone would accuse Lucille Ball of that behavior, and she was in a similar position.
And lordy, that hairdo - ugh! Whose misguided advice was that the result of? She was a very pretty woman. I had the impression her handlers were trying to make her look like Judy Garland - but Garland was able to transcend her ugly hairdos, not the case with Allyson.
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I'm right with you Moira, we had a set where the channel changer dial always fell off, so every time you wanted to change the station, you had to re-insert it, jiggle it until it fit in, and then hope you could spin it to your desired channel. When you let go, out it fell again. And there was nothing like those old scary movies in the afternoon, and the really scary, lurid old ones they showed late at night on the weekends. I didn't realize at the time that they were "lurid," I just thought they were "icky." What has happened to them? Those were the days!
JackB, I concur with your recollection of Invaders From Mars. No Theramin, but that creepy vocalizing. I can still hear it. (Shudder) Surely Kubrick must have remembered that when he was arranging for the scoring of 2001; the extra-creepy Ligeti choral music in 2001 is just an updated version of what we heard in Invaders, dontcha think? I love the Theramin as well. When I retire (soon, I hope), I'm thinking of trying to buy one and learning how to play it. My neighbors will appreciate it, I'm sure.
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Further to the language used by the characters in "Guys and Dolls" -
The story is based on a series of short stories by the journalist/writer Damon Runyan, who wrote about the characters he knew in the 20s and 30s who hung around the Broadway restaurants (that's Lindy'srepresented in the film - the one with the great cheescake - now long gone) and racetracks. These were the petty criminals, gamblers, hangers-on, slackers and smalltime showgirls and strippers of old Times Square/Broadway. Runyan gave them this stilted, almost classical way of speaking to give his stories a kind of timeless quality. These little people stood for all the foibles and small triumphs of all of us. In addition, as I remember it these stories were always told in the present tense (for example, "so Nathan goes to his tailor for a new suit, and the tailor says . . . ."), to give the sense of a storyteller giving us an insight into the human condition. I think the play and film capture the essence of the Runyan stories very well. And, by the way, Frank Loesser was the perfect person to put these stories into musical form.
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Thanks for the photo - it's a nice one. In the NY Times photo he appears to be a cavalry officer. I was looking at his filmography on IMDB - it is very long, especially for TV work.
Actors like Franz are the ones we've seen and liked for so long, and tend to take for granted. You say Oh, there's that guy who's in everything -- I like him. Like Whit Bissell or Harry Morgan, or countless other actors and actresses - you feel great affection for them, but they of course never get the primary attention. Very few character actors reach the stature of a Walter Brenna,( or Edward G. Robinson or Paul Muni, who were leading man/character actors), except perhaps among their peers. And when we lose them, we do remember them, and feel saddened.
I really appreciate the TCM seriess "What a Character." The last one I saw was about Conrad Veidt. It's about time someone pointed out to us how talented the character actors are, and how necessary they are to making a good movie.
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We "Invaders From Mars" lovers could probably talk for hours about the effect this movie had on us as kids. It really was a scary one, and used the bad dream conceit very well. I remember sharing the boy's frustration and fear as he was constantly stymied in his attempts to get a grown-up to believe him, and he knew darn well they were being controlled by outside forces. This movie really played on the dark feelings of helplessness children and adults were being programmed (by government and the media) to fear in the 1950s. Duck and cover, indeed! Since we've been discussing it, images of falling sand, fishbowl heads, and waddling aliens with big gloves on have been haunting me.
Anyway, for those who can access it, along with the wire service obit about Arthur Franz's death in The New York Times there is a very nice photo of him.
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I'm using a new ISP and have a new email address. The Member Services and Your Control Panel screens have let me add the new address, but won't let me change it to the default address or delete the old address. Please help. Thanks.
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The first time I saw GWTW in the theater, I was in college. It was 30 years after the film first opened. I remember that when Gable first appeared on the screen, in the opening party sequence, the entire audience gasped. Wow. That's what a Movie Star can do, even after 30 years.
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Could this be Susan Fleming and Lyda Roberti in "Million Dollar Legs" (1932/3)? Roberti had seduced and the entire Olympic team of the country of Klopstockia, and then dumped them. The team had lost their competitive spirit, and Fleming forced Roberti to tell them she didn't really love any of them. It took place in their locker room. The confrontation scene is similar to what you've described.
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And the fact that in the past we couldn't see these films on TV in letterbox -- it spoiled the whole setup of the dances. These musicals were made to be seen in the theater, on a big screen, and many of them lose their impact , and consequently their entertainment value, when they are squashed to fit the standard TV screen.
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"Father Goose" starred Cary Grant as a South Pacific island beachcomber who had to deal with a group of school children during WWII. Does this sound like the one?
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I remember seeing Burt Reynolds discussing Brando's "Guys and Dolls" performance on some talk show - this was probably 15 years ago or more. He said that he and his fellow actor friends, all of whom knew Brando, were very excited about Brando's having gotten the part of Sky Masterson, and that they were eager to see the finished product. He described in very funny terms their dazed and confused reactions to Brando's singing voice, which he proceeded to imitate. It was a riot.
So what. I think Brando did just fine for a non-dancer-singer. The role's main characteristic is charm, and Brando had plenty of that. I would have gone to Cuba with him in a New York Minute.
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By the way, that was a good guess about Gene Lockhart, one I didn't even consider.
I was thinking of him as Bob Crachit in the '38 version of A Christmas Carol.
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Very good, MrWrite,
Here's a hint: it takes a big man to keep his trousers on. Just because his trousers are off doesn't make him randy.
It Takes Character
in Your Favorites
Posted
About Charles Lane: Was that the occasion where he said "In case anyone's interested - I'm available"?