Swithin
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Posts posted by Swithin
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Correct. Imagine TCM not allowing me to spell correctly an innocuous term for a kitten!
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Pussey Reynolds wrap (sorry for the mis-spelling)
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She is one of my very favorites. I'd like to see the extra film of Joan as Aunt Sissy in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I've heard that shot alot more of her than was used in the film.
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The Poseidon Adventure
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But not the Ida Lupino film I'm waiting for: *The Light that Failed*.
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I don't think I quite get this game, because I think many of the double features mentioned would be great double bills! Here's mine:
*From Hell It Came*
*The Day of the Triffids*
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I love *The Last Hurrah* and think it's one of Ford's underrated masterpieces. It's obvious why he was drawn to the subject. It can be seen as a metaphor for television usurping the pride of place of the movies. That wake scene with Jane Darwell and the others -- that's a wake for the old Hollywood! Brilliant, moving film.
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Correct
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Boston Brahmin meets denizen of Copenhagen harbor.
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And June 4, Roz Russell's birthday, celebrates with six of her movies.
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Glad to see *Island of Love* on the schedule. Maybe not the greatest film, but totally enjoyable, with a very funny and endearing performance by *Betty Bruce*, better known for her portrayal of Tessie Tura in the film of Gypsy the year before.
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Andy, glad you like it. The printed program for the production came with a mock version of the Evening Standard newspaper. The headline read: "Police close in on Mack the Knife." The 1994 production is set in 2001, on the eve of the coronation of Prince William ("William the Fifth: a skateboarding king for our times.") The production was directed by Phyllida Lloyd, director of the recent Iron Lady.
The songs are full of contemporary British references, which you might or might not get, but you can look them up (Torville and Dean; Marks and Spencer; other more obscure ones). Tara Hugo, who played Jenny and sang the two songs you've listened to, was I believe the one American in the cast.
The "Barbara Song" is particularly fun. Instead of Bea Arthur's 1954 "Oh you can't just let a man walk right over you," Sharon Small sings: "No you don't just smile and pull your panties down..."
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I've since come to love many versions of 3 Penny. I saw the one with Sting some years ago, in NY. Best thing in that so-so production was Georgia Brown as Mrs. Peachum. But my all-time favorite production was at the Donmar in London in 1994, a brilliantly updated, gritty production with Tom Hollander as Macheath. My favorite updated song is "The Ballad of the Sexual Imperative," but they're all great. Listen to some clips here: http://www.amazon.com/Threepenny-Opera-London-Donmar-Warehouse/dp/B000005BGU
Here's a full recording of "Mack the Knife" from that production:
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MP, interesting post. I knew Kim Hunter, the original Stella. She played the role on Broadway, with Jessica Tandy as Blanche, and on screen, with Vivian Leigh as Blanche. I asked her once, "who was the best Blanche?" "Uta Hagen," she replied. Uta had played the role on tour, and stood in for Tandy on Broadway.
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LOL, Andy. Btw, I was thinking about the 1954 3 Penny Opera recenty, I love that recording! I used to listen to it as a child. The only problem with it was that when I saw a more authentic translation of the show, I was really disappointed, as I loved the Blitzstein 1954 version so much, which is really more of an adaptation.
And speaking of women in prison, I prefer the film of Roxie Hart to the show/movie Chicago. My favorite scene in Roxie Hart is the black bottom dance scene, with a very jolly -- an out of her usual character -- Sara Allgood as the prison matron, clapping her hands to the music.
Hibi -- I think Blonde Venus is a far greater -- and more mysterious and surreal -- movie than it's given credit for.
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*I Could Go on Singing* ?
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I doubt that if Jenny spilled the beans whether she would have lived happily ever after. She might have been jailed for life with possibility of parole. The murder Jenny committed wasn't even self defense, so to find her not guilty would have been totally unrealistic.
Two films made years later relate to this issue: Caged (1950), the best women's prison movie, which has a realistic ending with a jaded and criminalized Eleanor Parker leaving prison; and just a decade later, House of Women (1962), in which much the same character leaves prison and weds the prison doctor. Caged is a brilliant film, depicting realities of what happens to even innocent women; House of Women is a fairy tale.
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But Andy, anyway you look at it, Jenny was a murderer! That's what she was being punished for, not for the rackets she was involved in. And still, she could have escaped the severity of her penalty but chose not to. A rare movie where a woman sleeping around for money gets away with it is Blonde Venus (1932). Dietrich sleeps with Cary Grant to get money to pay for her husband's (Herbert Marshall's) treatment. Marshall can't forgive her until the end of the film, and she is pursued throughout the film, but she is redeemed in the end.
But Dietrich's character didn't murder anyone!
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The thing about Frisco Jenny: She did commit a crime, but there were mitigating circumstances. Her fate was to some extent her within her control. She chose NOT to tell the true story. So unlike other films, where murder must be punished by society, Jenny ACCEPTED her sentence, though it was within her power to change it.
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*Duck Soup* (1933)
next: donkey and sheep
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Good thread! Like Victor Borge's inflationary language.
*Three Strangers* (1946)
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Chatterton was older than the other pre-code actresses, which probably accounts for her second career as a novelist. Dodsworth was her final Hollywood film. She did return to acting for television later on. Wikipedia says she's a descendant of the English poet Thomas Chatterton. Don't know how that's possible, as the poet died -- probably a suicide -- at the age of 17. Perhaps she's of the same family, rather than a descendant.
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But still Andy, you use the phrase "It isn't that I'm blaming Frisco Jenny for copycatting Angels with Dirty Faces." Angels was made five or six years LATER! I went to a screening of Cavalcade at AMPAS in NYC last night. The film was introduced by a scholar who said that many of the plot lines and technical effects may seem cliched to us today, but Cavalcade was the first film in which they were used, so they have to be seen in that context. Of course Madame X, originally a play, was an early mother love scenario; but Frisco Jenny is a really interesting inverted riff on Madame X.
It's important to remember that there is something that we call a "Hollywood ending," generally meaning a happy ending which is forced and/or against the logic of the plot. Frisco Jenny does not cop out on that score; Baby Face does. And visually, thanks to director Wellman, Frisco Jenny excels. I particularly like the sleazy opening scenes in Jenny's father's saloon; a 1906 dive very well portrayed.
As far a film's final words, Helen Jerome Eddy and the clippings has no spoken words; only the song over the scene, which makes it particularly effective and mood conjuring, I think.
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Cagney in Angels was of course much later. You can't fault Frisco Jenny for a similiarity to a later film! Helen Jerome Eddy could have disobeyed Chatterton and told Donald Cook, but that would have robbed us of one of cinema's great ending images: Eddy burning the press clips, shot from behind the fireplace. And if Cook found out before Chatterton got the death penalty, that would have been a 50s happy ending, sort of.
Baby Face is fun, particularly in the early parts, but it would have been better if Stanwyck ditched Brent at the end. The ending of Baby Face is its weakest point. Stanwyck's exit, keeping the gifts, would have been better; or, if she had to return to him, simpering because she finally found a man she could love, he should have died from the shot. The ending of Baby Face isn't true to the grit that the film opened with.
I tried to watch Temple Drake but found it to be a bore. How it was touted on this board! If you want true grit, try Safe in Hell.
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*Yes, Georgio*