clore
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Posts posted by clore
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I like how Victor Mature says at one point that they'll use elephants to help transport the circus and refers to Hannibal using elephants to cross the Alps.
A year later, Mature played Hannibal in another film.
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You can't. The only other thing to do is to start talking politics, when it gets heated, the admins will come in and close the thread.
No, I'm not trying to be facetious. Only the administrator can shut down a thread and that's usually for discussions that get out of hand.
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This just looked like a good place to put in the two cents I wanted to put in last month but was too angry to say anything coherent, the whole issue was and continues to be so ridiculous.
I guess it was a good place as you had something going and while there are no patents here, I think most think enough of others to not "borrow" their ideas. Plenty of times I thought of doing something like the "weekly grooves" with more trivia and fewer exclamation points, but that's Mark's franchise.
I could easily start posting Agee reviews, but the OP of this thread has that nailed down and there's enough lore to go around that if I wanted to launch a board franchise, I could come up with my own idea.
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Not only an OAR variation (it's not listed as being letterboxed), but the monthly schedule's description for MOTHRA airing on the 15th sounds more like the first sequel:
"After Godzilla kills a legendary giant moth, its offspring set out for revenge."
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It wasn't held back because it was bad. By the time the film was finished in October 1944, the war was beginning to seem to be coming to an end soon. Warner Bros. decided at this point that it was better to get the war related films into theaters and hold back on the period pieces. Those wouldn't be dated by the time the war ended.
They did the same with DEVOTION and a couple of others and this in turn caused THE WOMAN IN WHITE, filmed in 1946, to be released in 1948. The studio had a backlog of releases.
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My ex threw out a lot of my magazines, but I'm not sure that it was inadvertent. She had a habit of destroying things when she was angry and most of the time those things belonged to me. Still, even after she made the donation to the NYC Dept of Sanitation, I had some magazines left, most of them monster mags of my youth and adolescence.
Those were lost to a flood in a basement apartment. There were only a few that were spared. Some of the lost ones had editorial contributions from yours truly, but I've never bothered to replace them.
If I had one house, let alone two, I'd practically be one of the Collyer brothers in terms of collectibles. These guys left behind 140 tons of accumulated stuff, including a rolled ball of aluminum that was wedged between the ceiling and floor.
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Yes, MGM loaned Gable as punishment, and then once again to Fox for CALL OF THE WILD. But that was it, he stayed home cuz that's where Meyer wanted him to be.
Similarly, Tyrone Power was loaned out by Fox for MARIE ANTOINETTE which also involved Myrna Loy going the opposite route for THE RAINS CAME. That was it for Power being loaned for the rest of his tenure. But both men were on the top of the totem pole, as Chaney was at the time that DRACULA was being planned.
So, how much of your living space do the books take up? I only ask because I have about the same number, but some had to be put in closet storage. I've got a son who is bound to be moving out soon and that bedroom will be the home of my books and movies. Otherwise, they're all over the place as I'm in an apartment.
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If you don't mind my butting in, it seems that the whole thing about Lon Chaney and DRACULA was based on something written in Famous Monsters years ago that came to be accepted as truth. The editor's speculation that Chaney would have gone on to make DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN came to considered as more than just wishful thinking.
But many people have gone through archives and tried to come up with some piece of paper that could verify that. One can say that Chaney was "considered" for the part, certainly Tod Browning might have had that in mind given his previous relationship with the actor. But being considered isn't the same thing as being signed or even just offered and this is where some "historians" may not have separated truth from fiction.
While MGM may have been willing to loan director Browning to Universal for the film, it seems highly unlikely that they would have loaned out Chaney any more than they would have loaned Garbo. Universal tried to get Chaney in on their revised for sound version of PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and MGM wasn't willing to even allow that. This was confirmed by correspondence uncovered in one of the searched archives.
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clore, thanks for the post. This is great news, and while I have many of these titles, some I only have on VHS. Let's see how my wallet holds out.
You're quite welcome - I'll confess to "borrowing" the list from a thread on the IMDb. Someone posted the list of titles there, then someone else embellished it with the director and stars. My contribution was to export it here.
I don't know yet if they will follow the Warner Archive business model and set up an in-house distributor, or just go via Amazon as Universal does. Maybe they'll even follow the Sony model and do a combo of both - with Amazon and the Warner Archive peddling them.
I've noticed that while you can buy the Sony line at WB, they usually aren't part of the occasional sales. For me that's important as I'm not spending 20 bucks on any film, pressed or burned - unless it's part of a set. So, I wait for the Archive sales in which I can get 50% off the Warner/MGM/RKO titles if I buy in lots of five, or even as they did recently, just requiring three titles to be selected.
The Universal titles at Amazon go for a straight $19.95 but once in a while, they will take 10% off for a day or two. Not enough of a discount for me.
As for Fox titles, I'm waiting for BLOOD MONEY, CALL HER SAVAGE, 20,000 MEN A YEAR, AMBASSADOR BILL - the kinds of titles that they didn't overplay on FMC. I had that channel for a decade, I've seen just about every Fox title that I've wanted to see numerous times. In July 2010, they were moved to a pay tier on my system and it wasn't worth it to me to pay for it. I can't see having to pay for "triple play" screenings of PORKY'S or REVENGE OF THE NERDS. Except for A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN or GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT, they just about never aired a b&w title in primetime.
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Marlene is an actress that not everyone likes, so she's hard to predict if someone is going to like her or not.
I have a friend who when anyone mentions that they saw Dietrich in a particular film, will come back with "That's the one where she sings in a saloon, right?"
He's right most of the time.
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That sounds more like some setting that's not quite right on your tv, and they don't "add" anything to upscale the image....the entire signal itself they transmit is upconverted to 1080.
I may not have phrased it properly, but there's something that appears to happen in the upconversion process that adds the tint.
This only happens on TCM, I've got 7 broadcast channels in dual form and goodness knows how many cable channels in both HD and SD. TCM is the only one affected in this way, not any of the six HBO channels or TMC or Reelz - you name it.
On the matter of the gray bars, I've been through the manual for the TV and the DVD player forward and backward. The player is set at 16:9 and there is no setting to adjust the color of the bars on the TV either. This is the second player hooked up to the machine and both had the same issue.
I've even checked reviews of the current player (an upscaling Panasonic), and while they did tip me off to settings not or poorly described in the manual, they didn't cover this particular issue.
I'll live with it for the time being, I've got my eyes on a new set when I get the unspent portion of a attorney's large retainer fee back soon. I'll put this set in the bedroom which presently houses a 15 year-old glass tube set.
Thanks for trying to help though.
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I have an HD cable box, and I set it for 16:9 picture. When I'm watching some 1940 movie shot in 4:3, I get black bars on the side. That's fine.
But if I'm watching a DVD of the same movie, I get gray bars on the side and it is annoying. Even with the 16:9 setting on the DVD player, I still get gray bars. There is no setting on the TV itself to alter that.
That's a shame that you have to go through the menus to make simple picture size changes. I have to do that to change brightness or tint. Only on TCM HD does it seem that I have to change the tint. Whatever they add to the signal to upscale the image, it adds a green tint, sometimes a lot worse than others. It's easier just to change the channel to the TCM SD and watch it that way.
Color films aren't affected like that, but black-and-white on TCM HD causes problems.
Maybe if I got one of those protective screens, it would improve the reception.
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He claimed that the signal was not letting him switch. Is that possible?
That's BS. At the worst, he should have had the option of 4:3 or 16:9 on TCM HD. There would be even more options on TCM SD with usually a "panorama" and a couple of "zoom" settings.
All it takes is to push the "picture size" button on the remote.
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They already program enough non-classic crap round-the-clock.
Maybe they're just setting it all up for their new MOD DVD line. The first 35 titles will be:
Always Goodbye (1938) - Barbara Stanwyck, Herbert Marshall (Director: Sidney Lanfield)
The Baroness and the Butler (1938) - William Powell, Annabella (Walter Lang)
Career Woman (1936) - Claire Trevor, Michael Whelan (Lewis Seiler)
Chicken Every Sunday (1949) - Dan Dailey, Celeste Holm (George Seaton)
Claudia (1943) Dorothy McGuire, Robert Young (Edmund Goulding)
Dangerous Years (1947) - Billy Halop, Scotty Beckett, Marilyn Monroe (bit) (Arthur Pierson)
Diplomatic Courier (1952) - Tyrone Power, Patricia Neal (Henry Hathaway)
Do You Love Me (1946) - Maureen O'Hara, Harry James, Dick Haymes (Gregory Ratoff)
The Foxes of Harrow (1947) - Maureen O'Hara, Rex Harrison (John M. Stahl)
Fraulein (1958) - Dana Wynter, Mel Ferrer (Henry Koster)
Frontier Marshal (1939) - Randolph Scott, Nancy Kelly, Cesar Romero (Allan Dwan)
Hudson's Bay (1940) - Paul Muni, Gene Tierney (Irving Pichel)
Intent To Kill (1958) - Richard Todd, Betsy Drake (Jack Cardiff)
Junior Miss (1945) - Peggy Ann Garner, Allyn Joslyn (George Seaton)
Kidnapped (1938) - Warner Baxter, Freddie Bartholmew (Alfred I. Werker)
Life Begins At Eight-Thirty (1942) - Monty Woolley, Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde (Irving Pichel)
Love Is News (1937) - Tyrone Power, Loretta Young, Don Ameche (Tay Garnett)
The Man I Married (1940) - Joan Bennett, Francis Lederer (Irving Pichel)
Mr. Scoutmaster (1953) - Clifton Webb, Edmund Gwenn (Henry Levin)
Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell (1951) - Clifton Webb, Joanne Dru (Henry Koster)
My Wife's Best Friend (1952) - Anne Baxter, Macdonald Carey(Richard Sale)
Outcasts of Poker Flat (1952) - Anne Baxter, Dale Robertson, Miriam Hopkins (Joseph M. Newman)
The Perfect Snob (1941) - Charles Ruggles, Lynn Bari, Cornel Wilde (Ray McCarey)
The Raid (1954) - Van Heflin, Anne Bancroft, Lee Marvin(Hugo Fregonese)
Rings on Her Fingers (1942) - Henry Fonda, Gene Tierney (Rouben Mamoulian)
Secret Agent of Japan (1942) - Preston Foster, Lynn Bari (Irving Pichel)
Slattery's Hurricane (1949) - Richard Widmark, Linda Darnell, Veronica Lake (Andre de Toth)
Slave Ship (1937) - Wallace Beery, Warner Baxter, Mickey Rooney (Tay Garnett)
Suez (1938) - Tyrone Power, Loretta Young (Allan Dwan)
Sunday Dinner for a Soldier (1944) - Anne Baxter, John Hodiak (Lloyd Bacon)
Sweet Rosie O'Grady (1943) - Betty Grable, Robert Young (Irving Cummings)
They Came to Blow Up America (1943) - George Sanders, Anna Sten (Edward Ludwig)
Three Brave Men (1957) - Ray Milland, Ernest Borgnine (Phillip Dunne)
Twelve Hours to Kill (1960) Nico Minardos, Barbara Eden (Edward L Cahn)
Way of a Gaucho (1952) - Rory Calhoun, Gene Tierney (Jacques Tourneur)
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I got to him briefly through a friend, and one of the things he was candid about was he really did enjoy a good marijuna smoke before performing.
No wonder he was acting the way that he was on his SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE appearance.
He died not long after.
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It's a shame Diane McBain didnt have much of a career as I thought she was very good in it.
She was good. This was originally announced a few years earlier as a vehicle for Carroll Baker. But her WB film THE MIRACLE flopped and the studio lost interest in doing it with her.
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Drago was the antagonist played by Dolph Lundgren in ROCKY IV.
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Well, I suppose you folks can see the resemblance Lansing down there might have had to "The King of Cool", can't ya?!
I thought that many years ago, when Lansing was doing 87TH PRECINCT on TV in 1961.
Oddly enough, McQueen made his big splash in THE BLOB which was produced by Jack Harris. The producer then took his money from that film, and after sacking McQueen from a signed three-picture deal because he was so dfifficult, Harris cast Lansing in THE 4D MAN.
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THE LEARNING TREE is on Saturday, June 9.
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As it is now, SUSPICION spends nearly its entire running time heading in one direction, then it suddenly goes in a reverse direction at the last minute. I get frustrated every time I watch it. It is not necessarily a weak ending, just the wrong ending.
For many years, I felt the same about the film. It bugged me, but then I began to think about it within the context of Hitchcock's career.
39 STEPS, SABOTEUR, TO CATCH A THIEF, THE WRONG MAN, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, FRENZY - in all of them, the protagonist is wrongfully accused of something and we see the unfolding of subsequent events through his eyes.
With SUSPICION, try watching it and thinking of it as being of the same formula, only this time we're looking at it from the POV of the person doing the wrongful accusing.
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Desperate for money, they thought they were getting the better of the deal by selling off their old "worthless" libraries to their new competitor television. And boy, were they wrong!
You would think that someone would have noticed the fortune made by William Boyd who was astute enough to buy the rights to his Hopalong Cassidy films when perhaps one home in ten had a TV set. He was smart enough to see that the new medium would need product with a somewhat marketable name and he put up his money to prove it.
Not only did he reap a bonanza from the TV sales, but also from the marketing of toys and lunch boxes. I believe that I read that in 1951 alone, he had made over a million dollars, about three times what he paid for the films.
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In 1958, MCA had bought Paramount's pre-1948 movies, all 764 of them, including classics like DOUBLE INDEMNITY, BEAU GESTE, SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS, UNION PACIFIC, the Hope/Crosby "Road" pictures all for around $50 million. Within six months, MCA had already earned $60 million in TV rentals from the Paramount movie purchase.
I wonder if that deal was done after Universal saw the dollars being reaped by Screen Gems. Universal had leased the old horror films to the Columbia division in 1957 and it didn't take long for the concept to become a nationwide phenomenon. Fortunately, the deal was just a lease and the titles came back to Universal ownership within a decade or so. The Paramount deal, as you noted, was an outright purchase and one that I'll bet the management at the mountain came to regret.
Flash ahead nearly 30 years - there was so much criticism of Ted Turner trying to get the MGM library that the stock fell to a level below the year's lowest point. To me that said "pounce" and once he acquired the films and announced his plans, the stock doubled the price that I paid.
Thank you, Ted.
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> {quote:title=finance wrote:}{quote}I love 12 ANGRY MEN, but I can't see how this film is a natural choice for "juniors".
You can tell by the trailer that they weren't sure how to market it to adults when it came out. Listen to how what sounds like music from the old RESCUE 8 series is used to create tension. Then notice how the film uses no music at all during the jury room sequences.
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Yes, I was kidding.
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And I really don't care where Scotty's lips have been either.
I grew up in a tough part of Brooklyn where the code was that you don't talk. You take your secrets to the grave lest you have some other motive be it avoiding imprisonment or just bad-mouthing others.
I don't really give a damn about who was doing what to whom, and lord knows that I have stuff in my past that I prefer to remain secret, whether it concerns myself or other individuals.
A rat is still a rat, even if he outlives the rest of his kind.