clore

It had nothing to do whatsoever with propaganda. The reason there was no mention of Cohan's first marriage was because that was Cohan's mandate. There were certain conditions that Cohan insisted upon and this was one of them. It's in the book "Inside Warner Brothers" by frequent TCM contributor Rudy Behlmer.

Didn't Burt Reynolds also say that Maltin had teeth like a beaver? I did love his bit in GREMLINS II:

Ann Coulter and Milton Parsons

Richard Quine directed Kim Novak in her debut and three other films. Supposedly the house being built in STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET was to be their love nest but they broke up before they could move in.

Fred, I see that the exclamation point disease has claimed a new victim. Don't mind me, when I was a kid reading DC comics, I could not help but notice that every sentence in one of their comics ended with an exclamation point.

I've got a book that is about 40 years old titled "The Celluloid Muse" and it has interviews/oral histories of a bunch of directors and Bernhardt is one of them. He made a quick mention of how he was stuck with a backlot Damascus and did whatever he could to make it look somewhat more interesting. The film is better shot than it is written. Our commentator does have a point that the wrong group is targeted as the bad guys - they didn't ask to be occupied. But then we have to go back and start correcting GUNGA DIN and 100 other movies, so we just have to let that part go. But the biggest sin the script makes is that we're not given a valid reason for Bogie's change of heart. Just to save Cobb's life? It's not "big" enough. Rick Blaine gave up Ilsa so that Victor could go on fighting the Nazis - guys who were doing a few occupations themselves. It's a wartime film and the "cause" was much bigger and more easy with which to identify. Thirty years after an event that few probably knew of while it was going on wasn't much that a 1950s audience member could relate to. Cobb was sedate but if he ends up with Toren again, he might have been better off dead. For a guy who set up his own production company as a response to what he thought were lousy scripts from Warners, between this, KNOCK ON ANY DOOR and TOKYO JOE, Bogie doesn't exactly come off as a good judge of material. Burnett Guffey apparently pleased Bogie as he worked on a number of Santana productions including THE FAMILY SECRET in which Bogart didn't star. He would even shoot Bogart's last film and go on to BONNIE AND CLYDE.

Possibly YOU CAN'T WIN 'EM ALL.

I guess I'll watch SIROCCO now...it's probably a warmed-over CASABLANCA... You do know that there's a general rule that says that movies that have Bogie wearing a bow tie but no dinner jacket are usually sub-par? TOKYO JOE and KNOCK ON ANY DOOR also fall under the curse. SIROCCO is worth watching only for the scene in which Marta Toren asks Bogart "How can a man so ugly be so handsome?" Try to avoid being confused by Bogie and Gerald Mohr being in the same film.

Robards was Capone in THE ST. VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE. It's one of his worst performances and when he played Brutus in JULIUS CAESAR (1970), he seemed to be doing Capone again.

When isn't Rod Steiger screaming? I think he picked it up from Lee J. Cobb when they worked together. Still, he was a much better Capone than Jason Robards.

Barbara Streisand in FUNNY GIRL is probably one of the biggest that I've seen in my lifetime. She tied with the longtime veteran Katharine Hepburn for an Oscar.

I never realized how much Cukor resembles David O'Selznick

Of course, of course, Except when your horse is a dinosaur He's always on a steady course Stepping on your car

If they hadn't played back-to-back, I probably would not have noticed. My back is to the TV as I'm at the PC, so sound was all that I had to go by. I often use TCM as electric wallpaper and in the case of these two films, I've seen both of them in the last month or so (even own BEAST) and didn't feel the need to sit and watch. Anyway, I had a moment where I thought "didn't BEAST end an hour ago?" and I turned around and there was the horse.

Not to change the subject, but some of the sounds being made by the horse in the movie airing now (THE LION AND THE HORSE) sound just like the rheasaurus in BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS.

MissWonderly said: I do know that I would find a "critic" who was always positive about the movies they reviewed unprofessional, and would not take them seriously. That would be David Manning, a fictitious critic created by Sony to provide favorable quotes for their films about a decade ago.

It was odd that since they were supposed to be his picks that he wasn't on duty for part of the time.

TopBilled said: But sometimes, he's immersed in an ugly sort of negativity that makes his writing not fun to read and turns people off. At least that's how I see it. I guess we could say that about any of us here. Maybe we don't mean it the way it reads to someone else, but subtlety isn't always easy to detect. I haven't looked at one of his books in ages but if I came across a review with which I disagreed, I'd turn the page and chances are that I'd find one with which I did agree. I've found him a lot kindlier toward genre films than most, especially Steven Scheuer his predecessor. He wrote of 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH: "Science-fiction rides again, it's not worth the trip." That was it, along with a 1 1/2 star rating. No mention of Harryhausen's effects. I doubted that he even saw the film. Maybe that early exposure contributed to my taking such things lightly today. It's just one other person's opinion. Back in the 50s, the works of Anthony Mann, Robert Aldrich, Howard Hawks, Phil Karlson and Douglas Sirk (to name a few) were not as revered by critics as they are today. But the public made the films popular. VERTIGO was dismissed by critics and the public, now it is perhaps the most celebrated film of its director. In the long run, it's what you think that matters. Celebrate what you love and don't let anyone else get you down.

I REALLY should know this, but how fast is 100 kilometers? How many miles an hour? As I recall some very early math examples, a kilometer is 5/8 of a mile. Thus 5/8 of 100 = 62.5.

FredCDobbs said: No, you are thinking of the 1-hour TZ shows, They ran for a year or so. These were definitely the half-hour shows that I was watching during a New Years marathon. It's not as if they were trying to hide anything, the listings had them blocked for 40 minutes, something I discovered when I checked as I thought it took more than a half-hour. The original shows on CBS were cut for 26 1/2 minutes. That accounts for opening and closing credits as well as the bumpers in the breaks. I worked there years later but I had in the files the timing sheets and break structures for the history of the network. At one point they only allowed two breaks in a half-hour slot.

skimpole said: Something isn't right. I can't seem to access the July, August and September schedules at all. I just keep getting the June schedule. Now any attempt to use another month reverts to providing the July schedule. I suppose around here that passes for progress.

Well, I've seen GYPSY WILDCAT and even of its type, it's not very good. ARABIAN NIGHTS and ALI BABA AND THE 40 THIEVES were better films starring the duo. Even COBRA WOMAN had more going for it since it had twin Marias for the price of one. As with their Frankenstein series, Universal began to cut corners and the results were routine films rather than exemplary of their kind.

MissWonderly said: Also - no one's mentioned the special effects, which I thought were fantastic for any era. I enjoyed the monsters much more than any CG creatures we have in film today I loved the creatures, I just wish that they weren't so easily eliminated. They needed more screen time and I'm surprised that Fairbanks didn't push this as he had a great awareness of what his fans expected - action. BTW - if you looked at the credits, you'll have seen Elton Thomas as the writer. That was the pen name for Fairbanks.

On another thread (Arab Images on Film Evenings - Politics-Free) it is claimed by a user that you had to start early because the print ran longer than expected and this wasn't realized until the last minute. But you aired the Kino print and a look at their website has it listed as being 154 minutes: http://www.kino.com/video/item.php?film_id=651#.ThR9yIJx1-x That was the Kino print that you aired, it said so. The IMDb has it listed as being 155 minutes with the Spain DVD being 139 minutes: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0015400/ Certainly with such discrepancies, it would have paid off to have checked a bit sooner. Or maybe have put up a crawl during the intro and outro for the previous film stating that the next film will start earlier. Having been in the business, I'm sympathetic, but one would think that after the debacle of the airing of A STAR IS BORN which had no credits and a nine-minute segment that repeated itself, there might be some new safeguards established. Nevertheless, thank you for checking in.

Slightly off-topic but I'm reminded of something Errol Flynn wrote about in his book. It seems that he and some others wanted to promote a new starlet and they came up with the name Linda Fortune. John Barrymore was being told about this and he said that would never do. "Why not?" asked Flynn. "Just how are you going to introduce her, as Miss Fortune?" came the reply.