VP19

I just gave this thread a plug at my site, "Carole & Co.": http://community.livejournal.com/carole_and_co/367692.html

May 2011 be a wonderful and prosperous year for my fellow classic Hollywood buffs!

> {quote:title=musicalnovelty wrote:}{quote} > > {quote:title=Scottman wrote:}{quote} > >It is a neat musical number. I've been collecting records for 35 years, and I really haven't heard a bad version of Turn On The Heat . "Fats" Waller's 1929 Victor recording of it is phenomenal. > > > The song was also used in the 1933 Walter Lantz cartoon HOT AND COLD. That is sort of unusual, as that cartoon was released by Universal, and the original movie that the song came from, of course was a Fox Picture. In 1933, Fox was struggling (heck, all studios other than MGM were, as the Depression had hit its nadir), so if a Universal property wanted to use the song, Fox was likely more than happy to sell its rights for use in that cartoon.

From remembering the thread, I believe it was locked because it unfortunately devolved into some irrelevant personal attacks between posters. The film, or the print, had nothing to do with it.

I wish TCM would show the 1930 version with Ann Harding. I saw it many years ago at New York's old Theater 80 revival house and enjoyed it.

> {quote:title=gagman66 wrote:}{quote} > I am disheartened that the *SUNNY SIDE UP* thread in "General Discussions" was locked before I could even bring up these points. TCM Web Administrator failed to address the issue as to if we were supposed to be seeing the newly restored version of the movie last night or not? All indications were YES we were. I mean the film was screened in the restored print at the TCM Classic Film Festival. It was scheduled for a Prime-time premier. That alone leads one to believe that this was going to be the new restoration yesterday evening. Generally, 25-30 some year old transfers of sub-par prints don't debut in Prime-time. > > Did we jump to conclusions? Lynn mentions nowhere is it advertised this would be the new print? All I have to say to that is two years ago, nowhere was it announced that the debut of Mary Pickford's *SECRETS (1933)* would be a new print either. But it was. TCM doesn't always tell us when a film is a new transfer in advance. In-fact, frequently they don't. In addition, on the Al Brendel fan site the claim is that this would indeed be the new version. Suggesting that they had first hand information. I would not be surprised if several other fan sites didn't announce the very same thing? Possibly a Charles Farrell or Janet Gaynor one. Probably Vita-Phone Varieties as well? I haven't checked those yet. Is it possible we could see the restored print in March? Otherwise, I have to assume that Fox does not have access to the recent Museum of Modern Art restoration, nothing in broadcast format? Much the same as it was with the 1926 *WHAT PRICE GLORY?* last May. Which was subsequently canceled. Even though they are technically still the owner of both films. Very confusing. Would sincerely appreciate some answers. > > I have to assume that TCM fully intended to show the new restoration last night if possible. I mean that was certainly the implication all along was it not? Hopefully, they can get this matter resolved, and we can still see the new version in March when the film is re-scheduled. If that is the case, I hope TCM alerts its viewers to the fact. I too was disappointed with the print, particularly the aural quality, since it sounded as if Gaynor and Farrell had shrunk to Munchkin size.

> {quote:title=Jenetico wrote:}{quote} > Maybe this doesn't fit this category, but never did like Fred MacMurray in "Double Indemnity." Every time I see the movie, don't think he fits that part. Bad casting, to me. I wouldn't have picked Barbara S either, but she more than holds up her end. Is the problem that many of us view MacMurray through his later Disney/"My Three Sons" persona? In 1944, moviegoers perceived him in a different way, as a handsome star adept at romantic comedies, and seeing him as Walter Neff was as jarring for them then as it is for many of us now. But he was a splendid actor in all sorts of roles. Incidentally, MacMurray was sought by Wilder to play Joe Gillis in "Sunset Boulevard," and while I'm sure he could have pulled it off, there would have been a veneer of Walter Neff in audience perception at the time, which might have worked against the movie.

> {quote:title=Kinokima wrote:}{quote} > > {quote:title=MyFavoriteFilms wrote:}{quote} > > Has anyone else noticed that the March Star of the Month films air _on Tuesday evenings_. Currently, in December (and January) it is on Thursday evenings. But in March, it moves to a different night. > > > It always switches around. That's right. In October 2008, the Carole Lombard "SOTM" films aired on Mondays -- including Oct. 6, 2008, the precise centenary of her birth. (Because of "31 Days Of Oscar," Jean Harlow won't get similar treatment on March 3.)

I like the concept -- I've seen issues of Photoplay and other publications from the classic era -- but am uncertain how it would translate into a documentary. I'm sure Mr. Slide (who was among those interviewed on "Moguls & Movie Stars") could contribute some ideas.

> {quote:title=kriegerg69 wrote:}{quote} > Basically, the reason I replied with is correct....several others have simply repeated the same reasoning in more convoluted form. > > The 35mm/16mm version of the movie is the ONLY way I've ever seen it since the "missing" scenes were restored to the film many years ago. I've never seen a completely 35mm "clean" version. It's likely for DVD there may have been some digital cleaning up a bit, but any time I see it either on TCM or elsewhere, it STILL looks like it goes back and forth between the two print qualities/formats. Since I still have the old Image Entertainment laserdisc release, I can say that the current DVD does look much better than the laserdisc, but it's still noticeable when the print material goes from 35mm to 16mm and back again....but the old laserdisc looks much worse between the two different print sources (since they obviously were not doing digital cleanups back then). > > As I originally stated, it's going to look this way unless original 35mm materials are dug up somewhere. The same thing happened to the 1937 Paramount film "Swing High, Swing Low." The original 35mm negative was borrowed by Fox when it re-did the story for the 1948 remake "When My Baby Smiles At Me," but it was never returned to Paramount and is since lost. Surviving 35mm portions have been combined with footage from a 16mm print belonging to director Mitchell Leisen. (The film's condition, even though it's in the public domain, is probably why it wasn't part of Universal's "Carole Lombard: The Glamour Collection," alongside her three other films with Fred MacMurray.) The irony? "Swing High, Swing Low" was Paramount's most profitable film of '37, so one would think a full 35mm print is out there somewhere.

Great Paramount stuff! Anything promoting Carole Lombard films?

We want pre-Code! (clap-clap-clap-clap-clap) We want pre-Code! (clap-clap-clap-clap-clap) We want pre-Code! (clap-clap-clap-clap-clap) etc., etc., etc.

> {quote:title=mrroberts wrote:}{quote} > Misswonderly, if you ever travel in the states come down to the Jimmy Stewart museum in Indiana, Pennsylvania, its about 1 hour north of Pittsburgh. There is plenty of memoribila about Stewart, much of it his own personal stuff and others donated by family and friends. You might get a chance to talk to someone who knew him , he made regular trips back home right to the later years of his life. And yes, they have souvenirs too. The museum, like many others, is on hard times due to the economic woes of the past few years. For more information, and how to help out, go to http://community.livejournal.com/carole_and_co/360622.html.

In a word...phenomenal.

To find out who dubbed who, check out this list, done alphabetically by film title. It even lists instrumental dubbers: http://www.barbaralea.com/Dubbers/dubberslist.html In the case of "Always Leave Them Laughing," Bonnie Lou Williams sang for Mayo, and Trudy Erwin for Ruth Roman.

> {quote:title=RayFaiola wrote:}{quote} > We ran my print of THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED at CineFest in Syracuse a couple of years ago. I thought it was an odd choice (for a bunch of mostly B-movie and silent movie fans) but it was very well received. I thought the casting of Frank Fay as a cleric was dubious, to say the least. Did this run at the Landmark (the old Loew's on South Salina Street), the Palace in Eastwood, or elsewhere? As a native Syracusan, I need to know. (When it came out, it almost certainly ran at the RKO Keith's a block south of the Loew's, a theater torn down in 1967-- along with the nearby Paramount -- to build a department store that went out of business barely two decades later. Curse you, urban renewal!)

This isn't really a negative portrayal of the clergy, but it is intriguing. In the 1933 Clark Gable/Jean Harlow film "Hold Your Man," the lead characters are married at the end by a preacher. In the main version, the clergyman was black; however, MGM apparently thought white southern audiences would not accept this, so in versions of the film shipped to the south, a white clergyman was used. (And said clergyman was portrayed by longtime star Henry B. Walthall, who appeared in many films, notably "The Birth Of A Nation," and was a Metro character actor until his death in the mid-thirties.) For more on this, go to http://community.livejournal.com/carole_and_co/174666.html

As a Carole Lombard fan, I'd love to see 1940's "They Knew What They Wanted" with Charles Laughton and William Gargan. I'm presuming there are some rights issues (perhaps with the estate of Sidney Howard, who wrote the 1925 play the film was based on) preventing the film from being telecast, although I recall a Philadelphia UHF station airing it in the late 1980s.

> {quote:title=hamradio wrote:}{quote} > CelluloidKid quoted: > << I've developed a kind of motto: "The biographer is obliged to tell the truth--even when it means saying something good about someone >> > > Doesn't this statement says that Donald Spoto was already bias before he started writing the book? I doubt Joan Crawford was *possessed* as the title states. > > If she was then those exorcist are never around when she needed them. I trust you were being facetious. If not, the title is a reference to a 1947 film Crawford made at Warners. I'm not the most avid of Crawford fans, probably because she wasn't especially good at comedy, but I admit she was a good actress given the right material and deserves to be recognized as a human being, not a caricature. (If Myrna Loy, someone I respect, liked Joan, then she must have had something going for her.) Down the road I may check out this book.

> {quote:title=misswonderly wrote:}{quote} > > There is a very good maker of this kind of documentary series, Ken Burns. He has made, to date, three fantastic documentary series about the Civil War, Baseball, and Jazz. He has said that he feel all three of those subjects have contributed hugely to American's identity. I think we could safely say that Movies could and should be considered an fourth ingredient to that. Burns' episodes were , I think, either an hour and a half each, or even two hours. This enabled him to cover his subjects in a lot of depth. I do wonder what Burns could have done with a series like this. > Burns might have done something good with it; conversely, he might have taken one specific angle and ran it into the ground (just as "Baseball" is spoiled by his obsession with the Boston Red Sox, and a similar New England-centric bias tainted "The Civil War").

> {quote:title=Arturo wrote:}{quote} > *WHV stated a few weeks back on their facebook page, that they "Have something very special planned for Miss Harlow's centennary."* > > Excuse my ignorance, but who or what is WHV? Warner Home Video, which has rights to MGM product of that era.

I think Paramount didn't really have much faith in Bow. They didn't take her all that seriously, and cared for her more as a meal ticket than as an actress. (Her rather scruffy background didn't help matters much.) I sense they didn't believe she had much staying power, and thanks to changing sensibilities -- more the public mood after the Wall Street crash than Bow's work in talkies, since like Marion Davies, her voice was more than adequate -- Paramount turned out to be right. But it was a Pyrrhic victory, because had the studio taken better care of Clara, she might have had more success in the early 1930s. Instead, she fizzled, largely due to scandal, and Paramount teetered on bankruptcy.

Fascinating material...please keep it up.

> {quote:title=lupinofan wrote:}{quote} > maybe i have been watching the wrong pre-code stars such as constance bennett, who i found to be bland and a carbon copy of harlow. Bennett's peak was 1930-32, a time when Harlow was still finding herself before "The Beast Of The City" and "Red-Headed Woman" elevated her as a smart actress with both sex appeal and some style. Bennett's films were a bit different from Harlow's, as she was often cast as an unwed mother or similar person, not a wanton hedonist. In fact, many of Connie's films during this time were perceived as "weepies." I've rarely seen people compare Bennett and Harlow. Interesting.

I would hope that any problems generated at this site have to do with the overseers from the computer company handling these boards, and not by TCM. That wouldn't make any sense.