clore
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Posts posted by clore
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According to one bio, George Raft got as far as the sixth grade.
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They missed a good one when they ignored Broderick Crawford 10.4.
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>>if no one is carefully monitoring the whole film, the error could be overlooked until the film airs.
I guess I must have been a control freak, or else I subscribed to the adage that "whatever can go wrong, will go wrong." That's probably what kept me in the office for so many hours after everyone else went home.
But if I had it to do over, I'd do it the same way.
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>>Alas if TCM were to run SEVEN CHANCES, it would be a premier. The one Keaton feature they have never broadcast.
It's aired on TCM, perhaps around 2001, but I taped it back then.
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Shouldn't the thread be titled "Laraine Day Day 10.13?"
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Whatever format used or how it is supplied, what I wonder is if anyone looks at them. Or is it a matter of things arriving too late for checking.
The reason that I ask is because over the weekend, there were three films that aired in pan-and-scan versions. It was especially apparent with YOU CAN'T WIN 'EM ALL which shuffled back and forth during the credits from full screen to letterboxed format when there were credits on the screen.
When I was at WCBS, we had library prints, some were on tape and some on 35mm film. Eventually all the film copies were transferred to tape but nothing got on the air without being screened first. Granted, wide-screen copies weren't an issue, but there were times that we were given the wrong film but everything was checked well in advance as I had to be able to notify TV Guide of any "last-minute" schedule changes about 10 days in advance of the issue hitting the stands.
Thus, we made sure that we caught the error of expecting to air TRUE GRIT with John Wayne and not the Warren Oates TV movie which we were erroneously supplied on one occasion.
Now some may perceive this as criticism, but it's really my wish to see TCM be all that it can be. Any system comes within itself some capability to be subject to flaws. I would have been showed the door if I didn't find ways to circumvent such things.
Good idea on the short revealing the behind-the-scenes at TCM.
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>>Do you know exactly what format TCM receives the movies on? Is each movie shipped to TCM on a video tape?
No, I can't say that I recall that info being provided. My experience with a NYC TV station goes back to the days of tape cartridges, with all the tags being the responsibility of what was called the traffic department.
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Yes, someone came in to explain that every little element (movies, promos, intros, etc) that makes up the schedule is tagged with an ID number. The commercial came in as an ID wasn't input properly and what we were supposed to get wasn't what we did get.
If I had to guess, I would think that the error the error the other night was already part of the element - the film copy. All movies are digital now and my guess is that the error came during the transfer and that this is what TCM received. I didn't stay with the line-up that night, so I have no idea if the extra ten minutes involved did or didn't screw up something later. I did notice THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES showed up a couple of minutes late and that was probably the extent of it.
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My DVD player cuts the sound off at anything other than normal speed. Even as I'm getting lose to 60, I still have most of my hearing and am sensitive to high frequencies. Thus, I am quite happy to be spared.
Freaks them out when I go for a physical though.
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>>One night at the end of an episode of "The Jack Benny Show" I saw the whole show rewound at super-fast speed...over the air!
Did that coincide with the sound track rapidly playing backwards? I've seen that happen with tape but last night's digital rewind was silent.
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>>But I think Five Star Final may be the best of the films shown. Don't miss it folks, if you haven't sen it!
I have to agree. I much prefer his Warner period - the first one that is. They had the zip that one expects from the studio whereas his MGM output reflected that studio's gloss and bloat. Had JOHNNY EAGER been made at Warners, it would have been twenty minutes shorter.
Leroy returned to WB in the mid-50s, getting a few Broadway adaptations to which he seemed to add little. THE BAD SEED - Production Code changes notwithstanding - needed to have a few of the performances toned down. NO TIME FOR SERGEANTS, GYPSY and MARY, MARY all betray their stage origins and it's a shame that perhaps his best from this period, HOME BEFORE DARK hasn't been seen in years. Unless one wants to buy a pirated copy, something that is verboten in my home.
Leroy's THE F.B.I. STORY unfortunately spends too much of its running time on some hokey family crisis subplots and is nowhere near as much fun as William Keighley's 'G' MEN.
Keighley is a good one to consider in this thread. Besides 'G" MEN, he also handled Cagney in TORRID ZONE, EACH DAWN I DIE Aand THE FIGHTING 69TH, so we can forgive his THE BRIDE CAME C.O.D. which was a lame IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT wannabe.
He also has GEORGE WASHINGTON SLEPT HERE and THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER on his list of accomplishments and a quick trip to Fox for THE STREET WITH NO NAME showed him quite capable with noir material.
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>>Maybe this is the christian version. A STAR IS BORN AGAIN!
Or Fredric March as James Bond in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE.
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>>As much as TCM would undoubtedly like to be able to air the UCLA restoration instead of a bad PD print, the UCLA restoration may come with strings we are not privy to.
Actually, the print quality wasn't that bad - better than any other copy that I've seen on TV or home video. That's the only reason that I stuck it out for the airing.
>>It's not always a case of TCM cheaping out.
Please be mindful that I never said that was the case.
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>>I believe in the sixties, NBC aired "The Notorious Landlady" with the reels out of order.
NBC once aired the mini-series WHEELS which was 10 hours long and accidentally left out two of the middle hours.
On another occasion, they had a Sunday late-night airing of WELCOME TO ARROW BEACH and neglected to come back to the film after the last commercial break.
In 1968, NBC's decision to break away from a football game to air the TV movie HEIDI led to the renegotiation of the NFL contract. The Oakland Raiders were down 32-29 in the last few minutes, but after cutting away from the game, they managed to score two touchdowns and defeat the NY Jets.
As a result of the ill will created, the NFL contracts now mandate a full telecast of games.
But the digital age brings with it new forms of potential errors and thus I imagine, will require new safeguards. Each form of technology brings with it new and unforeseen dangers. In the days of live TV, there was a presentation of "The Little Sister" in which a corpse got up and walked out of the scene. Lon Chaney went through a broadcast of "Frankenstein" thinking it was a rehearsal and was careful not to break the props that he thought he would need later.
In the days of film, there were incidents of it breaking and the "Please Stand By" slide was a relatively familiar sight. In NYC, during the days of tape copies, a local station aired what it thought was an edited version of "The Devil's Nightmare" and some nudity slipped through.
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The scene in question didn't involve a splice. We got up to May Robson consoling Janet Gaynor, and then you could see the film doing a fast rewind back to just before Fredric March takes a dip in the ocean.
It was as if you were playing a DVD and hit the "back" button - you could see the film backing up at high speed.
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#7 must be CAVALCADE or CALL IT A DAY
Edited by: clore on Oct 12, 2010 10:18 PM
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>>Or maybe they just really want us to savor Norman Maine snuffing himself...
A Star is Dead...and Then Dead Again
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First the film went to black during the credits, now it just did a rewind and we'll get to see Norman commit suicide again.
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My present writing is related to presentations for the broadcast industry - at least it was until I retired a couple of years ago.
In my youth I wrote for Castle of Frankenstein and The Monster Times. I also helped write a TV special on the Three Stooges back in the late 80s. It was a joint venture between Screen Gems and Color Systems Technology but since the credits were contractually bound already, i was listed as marketing director.
i was employed by Screen Gems for a couple of years prior to that and wrote tons of promo material that was used to promote the various movie packages that I had compiled for syndication.
Oh - I also had a review printed in the book "Horror 101" which was edited by Aaron Christensen. He had seen some of my postings on various message boards and as with all of that book's contributors, I was solicited precisely for being more fan than pro.
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>>And then there are the film historians (I won't mention any names) who deliberately insert "errors" into their writings so they know when they've been copied from by other writers. I won't say here what I think of such behavior.
That reminds me of the time that I found an error while playing Trivial Pursuit. I sent a note to the authors of the game and the response was that it was a deliberate error for copyright reasons.
As far as my opinion of such authors, well, as I tend to provide footnotes for anything that i write, it won't be my error. But if I found one such error, I'd use it as criticism and find another source to verify.
Reminds me of that 1966 error-filled book on horror films by Drake Douglas where he referred to "Mike Hammer Films of London" and THE WOLF MAN as being made in 1933. He said they were typographical errors!
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>>Some TCM researcher go hold of the wrong info & really ran with it, it seems.
It sure sounds as if one painted the town with it. The online reference will be the worst of all - the TV intros won't see the light of day again but the print reference will be around for who knows how long.
Up until the last years of his life, Boris Karloff was often asked about his real name. Somewhere along the line in the 1930s, a source had him as the former Charles Edward Pratt when his real name was William Henry Pratt. The error lived almost as long as Karloff.
TCM should mandate that research be footnoted, all sources described in full. I'd gladly read it for free, promising not to correct anything in the way of language - although I might make note of the proper way to pronounce Harry Cohn's last name.
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I noticed the other night that for the second time, Mr. Osbourne referred to Christopher Lee's Fu Manchu films as being Hammer films.
I don't expect someone to have gone back and reshoot the intro after I pointed out the first time, but as this is one of the big events of the month, it could have been researched a bit better - it's not as if there aren't online sources to double-check.
Heck, maybe they should try putting the copy online here and let us check for errors (I know, that's the stuff of FANTASY ISLAND). I'm not trying to insult Mr. Osbourne, I want the man to come off as well as possible. But as this happened two weeks in a row, it shows how a piece of misinformation can perpetuate.
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He could even steal a scene when the cameras stopped rolling. The story goes that while filming the scene in SPARTACUS in which Kirk Douglas puts McGraw's head in the soup and holds it there, when the actor came up for air he said "Needs more salt."
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>>Trumbo?s movie was sighted as one of the worst to fear. All of a sudden, a film that had a reasonable amount of respect and admiration was turned into a hostile piece of communist propaganda.
Ginger Rogers' mother, a self-proclaimed expert on detecting Communist propaganda had a lot to do with that. She was particularly upset with a line of dialogue that said "Share and share alike, that's democracy."
Stars' educational backgrounds
in General Discussions
Posted
>>Paul Douglas and William Bendix seemed to play dopes a lot in films. Same with Mike Mazurki....
One of my old reference books made mention that Mike Mazurki graduated at the top of his class (Bachelor of Arts) and had translated several works of Slavic authors into English.