MissGoddess
-
Posts
22,766 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
3
Posts posted by MissGoddess
-
-
FG: Natalie had the gift in that her performances, her characters, had a way of communicating directly to the audience, reaching their hearts. You could see the real vulnerability in her eyes and I think that always grabs people.
-
Beautiful pictures, ForeverG! I love the way she looked when she grew her hair out long. So lovely.
-
Only 69. She would still be what I call "young". It is particularly sad because I think she developed into a very strong and appealing mature actress. I also think at least one more Academy award would have been in her future, and many performances worthy of it.
-
>
> What is it with you today? Why I've seen
> plenty of Gary Cooper movies. I saw that one
> with uh, that lady from The Big Valley, where someone
> threw a tomato at him and he had to jump off that
> building; and then one where he was making a
> dictionary and his buddies held Dan whatshisname down
> and tickled him; and then one where he was a sheriff
> who was out of bullets or something and nobody would
> give him any. I know tons of Coop movies. Ask
> me anything.
LOL!!! Just testing, Lucky D, just testing....
"That lady from The Big Valley"...tsk tsk!!
-
Beautiful review of Man of the West, Frank---so glad you enjoyed it. And I am reconciled to the ending, like Angie pointed out to me, and you mention in your post, Link was moved to stand up for a stranger, representing all women, and that point would have been lost had she been his wife.
I like that you quoted Julie London's best lines, they were the grace notes in the film. I think Gary's performance is quite awesome---and I don't mean that in the Valley Girl sense, but in the original meaning of the word.
-
[nobr]Wistful, brunette beauty Natalie Wood was born Natalya Nikolaevna Zakharenko to Russian parents in San Francisco in 1938 and drowned tragically off Catalina Island in 1981. The petite, 5-foot tall actress started appearing in films at the tender age of four and was one of the most successful in Hollywood at transitioning from child star to mature actress. Natalie had two daughters, one from second husband Richard Gregson, and another from first and second husband Robert Wagner. Her sister, Lana Wood, also is an actress, most notable for appearing as a Bond girl "Plenty O'Toole" in Diamonds Are Forever.[/nobr]
[nobr]Some trivia tidbits courtesy imdb.com and me:[/nobr]
[nobr]* Nominated three times for an Academy Award (Rebel Without a Cause, Splendor in the Grass and Love With the Proper Stranger)[/nobr]
[nobr]* Had a mortal fear of drowning since childhood[/nobr]
[nobr]* Dated Elvis Presley in the 1950s and may have married him, but his mother did not approve. In the 50s, Natalie had a reputation as one of "Hollywood's Bad Girls", along with Janet Leigh and Debbie Reynolds (!) [/nobr]
[nobr]* Her mother was a ballerina and Natalie studied ballet since she was a tot. Later, she would attend the same ballet classes as Robert Wagner's current wife Jill St. John, and his TV wife, Stefanie Powers.[/nobr]
[nobr]* Her favorite actress, and mine, was Vivien Leigh![/nobr]
[nobr]
[/nobr] -
John---consider both The Bourne Identity and A History of Violence in my Netflix "queue", thanks!
-
I love this thread, it's cracking me up! I can say I sadly relate to all too many of the examples.
I have one more to add: If everyone at your office knows YOU were recently in the break room....because the TV is tuned to Turner Classic Movies and not the Mets game.
-
Hmmmm....the Frank Sinatra collection is tempting, except that I already have Kings Go Forth and it's my favorite of the bunch. However, A Hole in the Head may be the drawing card, it's rarely shown and I remember liking it very much. As a would-be Sinatra completist, I may take the plunge.
-
OH MY! One of my great wishes is coming true!!! John Barrymore's The Sea Beast is coming to dvd! I could cry with joy! And not only that, but Beau Brummell, too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so happy about this, so deliriously happy.
And a Frankie Sinatra special from 1957---arguably the peak year of his skills!!! That is another definite, without hesitation purchase.
And if The Bishop's Wife is available separately, I will add that one, too. One of my favorite Cary Grant movies.
-
> Miss G:
>
> <I read your comments about Wayne with interest,
> even though I'm really totally non-political and dare
> I say it here, a John Wayne movie fan! Hee! I hope
> you won't hold it against me, John.>
>
> If I were to act like that, I fear there'd be few
> people indeed I could ever chat with!
Never fear with me, I like people who state their opinions without fear or hedging. I can respect that completely, whether I agree or disagree.
-
I haven't seen any of the Bourne films, for the reasons you mention (quick cuts, car chases, etc). I wrote them off as typical action films. I'm not a Matt Damon fan but I might rent one of those to give him another chance. Thank you very much for the suggestions.
-
>
> Did you happen to catch Viggo Mortensen in A History
> Of Violence? Nothing girly-guy about him; in fact,
> it's actually an updating of Man Of The West, a loose
> (and sometimes not so loose) reworking of it. As is,
> and this bugs me how few critics spotted this, Clint
> Eastwood's Unforgiven a reworking of Man/West.
I never even heard of either Viggo Mortensen or A History of Violence---I take it that is a feature film and not a documentary? Is it on dvd?
-
Interesting points-of-view about the trend in action and super hero types.
I don't know but that I find equally dismal the kind of men that seem far more often depicted in movies since the 1970s---the girly-guys (who are most often the critic's darlings). Woody Allen made the ineffectual such a mainstay and to this day it's hard to figure out which is the boy in the boy-girl stories. And then you have those action heroes on the opposite end of the spectrum. It has even influenced the latest 007 James Bond choice, Daniel Craig. He's a muscle-bound meat head! Everyone seems to love him but I think he has no charisma or intellectual presence whatsoever in the role.
So there are no men like Coop, Bogart, Cagney, Stewart, and Gable who were special yet not "extreme" in any sense of the word. Their characters were often shrewd and wise but seldom backed down from a fight. I guess it's the confidence they projected which is most absent in leading men today. It's as if to show confidence is a sin, or to show a self-aware sense of humor equally sinful. No happy medium!
I'm trying to think of the last time I saw an interesting leading male character depicted in a movie. I feel like I have to go all the way back to Russell Crowe in The Insider, maybe.
-
Thank you John for your kind comments---but I'm a realist and I think my talents as an actress, in film and stage anyway (maybe not in life?) are only so-so and I was definitely too old-fashioned. I had fun, though, and cherish the most the people I met who were older and had been around when Hollywood was more fun. Their stories and the even the occasional flattering comments about my passion for those movies really kept me going.
I loved the comments from Hemmingway---Across the River and Into the Trees is one of my favorite of his stories. And I like how he answered Coop.
I read your comments about Wayne with interest, even though I'm really totally non-political and dare I say it here, a John Wayne movie fan! Hee! I hope you won't hold it against me, John.
-
> > Okay, I'll stop with all this guy-gal stuff. I
> hope
> > to talk turkey on Coop tomorrow after I watch
> Man
> > of the West.
>
> No guy-gal stuff? What would Coop think of
> that? (Thought it was worth a try.)
>
> Okay, so maybe if I'm gonna hang around here I better
> watch a Coop flick.
Gary was VERY much into guy/gal stuff, lol! Notoriously you might say with a wink and a smile (always say it with a smile if you're talkin' to Coop).
LuckyD you've never seen a Coop movie? Or haven't seen one recently...I hope that's what you meant....
-
Dan, I've never seen Bright Leaves but if it has as much Coop and clips of "Bright Leaf" as you all say I may try to rent it.
-
LuckyDan & Frank: You guys are breaking me up with you mini-discussion! Are you in competition for most considerate lover? Sounds like your wives/girlfriend's are pretty fortunate.
Or maybe this thread just seems to bring the best out in people.
-
>>>More than one of the questions dealt with why they'd never heard of The Westerner, why it never played anywhere, etc. Dick Shepherd said what I believe, that because The Westerner was directed by William Wyler, who is persona non grata among the critical/film scholar establishment today, it is simply ignored<<<
I can't understand why that is. I would have thought he was more respected, his movies are so meticulously crafted and the characters beautifully developed. Maybe because he is not flashy, seldom employing unconventional camera angles or tackling subjects that are too "edgy". That's a pity because he's one of the first directors I became aware of growing up, especially through his films with Bette Davis, all of which are classics.
-
>>>That would have been good but I think it works better with Julie London's character being a stranger to Gary. We would expect him to try and protect his own wife but to also do the same for a total stranger shows how much his character has changed. He may have joined in with the way the others treated her back in his old days but now he tries to protect her. <<<
Good point, Angie, I admit I hadn't thought of it that way, but it does say more about Coop's character that he would do as much for a strange girl---and one with a dubious reputation at that.
-
> <I can see bits of King Lear in Man of the West,
> don't you think?>
>
> Very much. Man/West is almost Shakespearean in its
> themes, development, and working out of the plots. As
> much as I like several of the Mann/Stewart westerns,
> Man/West to me is Mann's masterpiece.
I agree! I sometimes feel like I am a voice howling in the wilderness on that score so I'm happy to see others think so, too. To me it's very different to Mann's other westerns with Stewart. Even the setting---where the outlaws have their old hangout looks more like Wales or the British Isles than the west (more shades of Lear). The ghost town setting and the mountains behind it is more familiar Mann and western territory.
When UA saw the
> finished film, they had no idea what to do with it,
> it was so grim, dark, bleak, downbeat, violent, that
> they dumped it into second-string grind houses. Was
> the first GC film not to open on Times Square, opened
> at something called the Brooklyn Paramount. Natch,
> was a box office bomb. Only now, so many years later,
> has it come to be recognized as the masterpiece it
> is.
A Gary Cooper movie premiering in Brooklyn....hmmmm. Not a natural fit. Maybe Garden of Evil since it had Brooklyn gal Susan Hayward....lol
>
> Cooper, Mann and screenwriter Reginald Rose discussed
> having the female character be Cooper's wife, not a
> saloon singer. Thought it would make the violence and
> stripping and rape that much more powerful, and bring
> it all back to the Cooper character's murderous past
> coming home to roost, so to speak. But it was felt
> that Julie London couldn't handle the complexity of
> this, so they kept the role as in the novel and
> original screenplay.
>
Oh, I wish they had made her his wife! The only fault I find with the movie is the ending, I really wanted them to stay together. I'm a die-hard romantic and fan of the happy ending bit, just to warn you.
-
Interesting comment by McRea, regarding what "he tried to represent" as an actor. I find that terribly moving, because that kind of viewpoint seems non-existent today. Men like he and Coop and others of that generation really cared about representing something fine and clean. I was in Hollywood long enough to find myself constantly at odds with the idea that any character was worth playing. I never wanted to even audition for parts that went against my deepest values, but no one else I knew felt that way.
I wasn't talented enough to make it anyway, ha ha! So off my soapbox.
>>>The first cut was, get ready -- nine hours. Man, has it been a journey, now down to two-and-a-half, only hope I haven't drained too much out. <<<
If you haven't found out yet, John, you have a little audience here that would be MOST willing to see the "nine hours director's cut" of that baby! LOL
As for those projects, it's so exciting to think what might have been...I can easily see him in the roles that William Holden went on to take. I can see bits of King Lear in Man of the West, don't you think?
-
That's so true, John about the actors who admire Coop---I watched some old Merv Griffin interviews and in one Lee Marvin just spoke in awe of Cooper.
>>> personally think that if GC's rep has suffered over the past couple of decades, it is due, perhaps to the fact that he made very few films with those directors annointed as auteurs, and therefore many of his best films and most fascinating performances are never studied, or written about, or taught. He made none with Hitchcock, Ford, etc. And the two biggies he made with Hawks -- York and Ball Of Fire -- are looked down on by the Hawks claque.
GC certainly isn't alone in this regard, but I think he has suffered more than others. Which is a topic for another time. <<<<
Interesting point---I am afraid I was one of those who overlooked Gary for quite a while. I really did not come to appreciate his skills and fall for his more personal charms until fairly recently. He has a very non-flashy style that some may mistake for lack of effort. I know that the author of The Last Hero was particularly unfair in that regard, dismissing some movies he did and implying he was not giving anything. While I agree not all his movies are at the same level, I haven't really seen him just "walk through" a role yet. There is always something going on in his eyes, and whether it's practiced technique, hours of preparation or just tossing it off, it's never less than interesting and you can't help but watch him.
I find that in the movies where he is supposedly being out-shined by his costar, he is the one I watch more carefully. Garden of Evil and Vera Cruz are prime examples of this.
-
Mongo---thank you for sharing that with us. I don't think I was here for Stella's posts, but I am sad to learn of losing a die-hard Cooper fan.
Any Natalie Wood Fans?
in Your Favorites
Posted
Hi, LuckyD---I was surprised to learn she was so tiny, too, but she more than pleasingly filled the big screen. I remember seeing Gypsy as a twelve-year-old on TV and forming the quite serious resolution of becoming a professional stripper. My parents soon put a period to that ambition.
I have always thought that Natalie Wood, Ava Gardner and Brigitte Bardot had the best figures in movies. Unbelievably small waists, all of them.