clore

I find that it took Newman a while to become relaxed enough to do comedy well - not that PARIS BLUES is one, Try sitting through RALLY 'ROUND THE FLAG BOYS, A NEW KIND OF LOVE or THE SECRET WAR OF HARRY FRIGG. His performance in THE LEFT HANDED GUN is too much a James Dean imitation to be tolerable. I find his early screen work too much an example of the "scratch and mumble" variety as Bogart once said of some Method actors. On the other hand, Newman himself dismissed THE YOUNG PHILADELPHIANS yet I find it to be one of his better jobs in those early years.

>>In the picture, who is the small man sitting to the right of Burt? Think his name was Paul and he was a songwriter? Must be Paul Wiliams from PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE.

>>Yup. Nothing gets past those Daily Planet reporters. I was about 30 when I started wearing glasses. I went into work, certain that no one would recognize me.

>>This film gives it all away in the first twenty minutes, unless viewers, like the actors, can't tell that's Macready in a beard. I guess that the cast was made up from Daily Planet reporters.

I find the film pretty much hopeless. It's starts with Cobb's performance which comes across as part Luigi from Super Mario Brothers and part Chico Marx. I keep expecting him to accompany Holden by playing the piano with one finger. Then there's that bit with the daughter saying to her father (about her husband) "He can hit me anytime he wants." I'll confess though that I find Odets to be a horrid playwright and one whose works have all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

Don't forget CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF. Between all the times it is mentioned in the film, and how many times it has played, the word "mendacity" is burned into my brain.

I saw it when it came out, and suffered through it about a year ago during a bout of insomnia. Richard Harris looks like Buster Brown with that hair-do and Sophia and Ava are in such soft-focus that they practically disappear. One can't help but watch it for laughs these days, but I didn't today.

I prefer *Miller's Crossing*. The other is fun if you want to count the way the train varies between shots - but who wants to?

Before the NYC subway system made Coney Island easily accessible for anyone in the city, it was more of a resort area and more the province of the well-to-do. There were hotels, a race track and an area that was designated as a "private beach." http://www.westland.net/coneyisland/articles/earlyhistory.htm

>>So, I think the imdb person got his wires crossed about the interview. It could also be that Wayne wasn't remembering accurately. Up until the end, when he would speak out against HIGH NOON (which was often), he would refer to a non-existent scene in which Will Kane steps on his badge. He threw it in the dirt, but he didn't step on it.

>>How well do you remember the ending, by the way? Now that you bring it up, I recall that there was a bit of business at the end that I meant to view again. I think it happened at the point where Frank was in the cave and coming back out, but I may be mistaken. I'll have to check out the DVD sometime tomorrow.

I'll have to see which one he's riding in the beginning. The Scott mount that I recall the most is the magnificent one named Stardust, with the golden mane.

I'm very familiar with Famous Monsters, but don't have many of them left anymore. I do still have a first issue which is autographed by Forrest J Ackerman. I used to send them letters often, but all that ever appeared in print was an excerpt in issue 34, it has the Fredric March Mr. Hyde on the cover. Castle of Frankenstein was one of the first FM imitators, but it was a bit more literary. It aimed for a somewhat older audience. I can't grumble about getting paid or not. The editor introduced me to many friends who included the likes of Wiliam K. Everson, Carlos Clarens, and Leonard Maltin who is the same age as I and whom I met at an Everson screening in August 1966 of the 1936 SHOW BOAT which at the time was not in circulation. I had a byline at age 15 in the magazine, some things one can't place a monetary value upon. One of these days I'll get another copy of the issues that had my name, I lost almost my entire monster magazine collection to a flooded basement.

>>Also, wasn't the remake like half-an-hour longer than the original? I looked it up last week after watching the original film - the remake was exactly 30 minutes longer.

Castle of Frankenstein was run from the North Bergen basement of Calvin Beck, a guy who couldn't afford to pay staff, so he used the likes of Barry Brown (later an actor), Joe Dante (later a director) and myself (later a TCM Message board contributor) for a half-cent a word - if we got paid at all. Not long ago, I was watching that Kirk Douglas production of *The Way West* and was thinking that 37 years later. it's images in color were no match for the older *The Big Trail*. Also, it's funny how one can forgive the cliches of a nearly 80-year-old film, since it was establishing them, while the more recent film is almost laughable for them.

I had no problem with the performances in the remake of *3:10 To Yuma*, a film I now refer to as *3:10 To You Made A Lousy Movie*. I thought they were fine, the settings and color were good. Before I forget them, these were my thoughts on it. Primarily, I found it was just one laugh after another, from Fonda riding a horse the day after getting shot up close in the stomach to the supposedly handicapped Bale darting across rooftops like Batman. Professional gunmen that can't shoot straight and farmer Bale who can hit moving targets with one shot. If they were better shots, the bad guys could have shot the bands around the barrels that Bale was hiding behind and they would have fallen apart. While I thought the original had a somewhat weak ending, this one just had me furious. As for Yankee Doodle Dandy - it should have been made in color, the better to see all the red, white and blue. I saw *The Ox Bow Incident* when I was about 16 and when I saw it again about 20 years later, I was so disappointed because in my mind it was a color film. On the other hand, it's so wonderful to see Flynn's *Adventures of Robin Hood* in restored color as when I was a kid, WNEW used to air the black-and-white reissue prints.

Chris worked in the programming and scheduling department for the station when I met him in 1966 and he was still there when I was in syndication in 1986. Prior to that, I was advising the station on programming when I worked for a TV station rep firm that helped sell airtime for WOR and KHJ. He retired when the station moved to Secaucus. Chris was also an author on film, "The Films of Sherlock Holmes" is one of his titles. I was just a 15-year-old film fan doing some work on "Castle of Frankenstein" magazine when I met him through Calvin Beck the editor. They were longtime friends and both were very patient with me and all of my questions. Chris also held screenings at a YMCA near Grand Central and I helped out on chores for him.

>>It's the same way with me - if I don't write or post something about a movie, I tend to forget a lot of it, excerpt for some small details here and there. It also has to do with selective memory I believe. I'm sure that in a few weeks I will have forgotten the details of why I could not stand the remake of 3:10 TO YUMA which I saw two weeks ago. I don't want to remember.

Did you know Chris Steinbrunner at WOR? I knew him fairly well and had been to his home a few times to watch films in 16mm. I worked at WCBS-TV for a spell in the late 80s.

>>That is really, really good considering you hadn't seen it in over 20 years when you wrote it! >>You're better than me at that - I would have a hard time talking about some of the movies I watched 2 weeks ago if I didn't write or post anything about them. Thank you. What helped was that for many years I was jotting things down in notebooks on the Scott films as I had hoped to get at least an article out of it. This goes back to the early 70s and I had a binder with looseleaf pages for each film. If I picked up something along the way, I would add to it. I lost the binder in the 80s but because I had written things down, it stayed in my head better. I then reconstructed it in the form of a film-by-film summary, but I was emphasizing the ones I hadn't seen recently. When I was working for Screen Gems in the 80s, I created a package of westerns for syndication and used a lot of that for promo material. Thus the writing and rewriting instilled a lot into my brain's RAM.

I'm game for THE TALL T. It will give me an excuse to take a look at it again in preparation. I haven't watched my DVD copy yet as TCM has aired the film a few times in the last year or so. I did find this on my PC, something I wrote back in 2001 on the IMDb boards. This I had done from memory, not having seen the film then for over 20 years: Columbia publicity claimed the "T" was for terror, anyone seeing the film might say for "Terrific." Randy was back with Boetticher and Kennedy scripting from the first Elmore Leonard story "The Captive," to reach the screen (albeit only shortly before *3:10 To Yuma*]). Scott is a cowpoke who loses his horse in a bet, and is forced to trek through the desert on foot, where he comes across a stagecoach, much as John Wayne had almost 20 years earlier in *Stagecoach*. Inside the coach, driven by Arthur Hunnicutt (who would steal scenery if he didn't like you), are a just married couple (Maureen O'Sullivan and John Hubbard). The so-far light-hearted film becomes a tense thriller once Richard Boone, and fellow outlaws Henry Silva and Skip Homeier, capture the stage, in the mistaken notion there is gold hidden on it. (The stage was an actual 1860s Concord, but it was fitted with shock absorbers and foam pillows). However, once the groom reveals that his bride is an heiress, the group is held for ransom, later the new husband is killed trying to escape. It is up to Scott, whose career-length character transformation is represented well within this one film, to prey upon the weaknesses of the younger outlaws, and eventually and inevitably confront Boone, because "There are some things a man just can't ride around." The latter was a line Kennedy would use in the future in both *Ride Lonesome* and *Support Your Local Gunfighter*. Boone, and most of the basic situations would be back ten years later, in Leonard's only slightly revised *Hombre*, which had a greater budget, and lots of star names, but dollar for dollar, *The Tall T* is at least its equal. The interplay between Scott and Boone is one of the highlights of the careers of both actors. Boone was much younger, but already becoming as craggy a visage as Scott, and both men matched the looks of the barren, and rough location. In the 50s, both Anthony Mann and Boetticher seemed to relate the barren locations to their heroes - you were as tough as the land, or you didn't make it to the end of the film.

Both versions are on the DVD. I'll have to check that out as I've only seen the "flat" version and that was many years ago.

The Midway is still there, cut up into about six screens. I believe the Forest Hills theater is closed. I haven't been over to the 71st/Continental area in a few years now, not since I saw CASINO ROYALE at the Midway. There used to be some nice shops there and on Austin Street, but now it looks typical with the usual five-dollar coffee sellers, chain stores and TGIFridays. The "mall-ification" of America is in high gear over there except there's nowhere to park. Well, there is the indoor lot (near the Continental Theater on Austin) that charges 6 dollars for the first hour. But you have to sit in bottle-necked traffic to get there. I grew up in Ridgewood and graduated from Grover Cleveland in 1969.

Fox also made a 1929 musical HAPPY DAYS in the Grandeur process as well.

TCM aired a whole day of racing films last May on the day before the Kentucky Derby. I'm looking forward to the now-in-production SECRETARIAT which stars Diane Lane as Penny Chenery and John Malcovich as trainer Lucien Laurin.